The Human Side of Autonomous Vehicles: When Communities Fight Back
While companies like Waymo, Cruise, and Tesla tout the safety, efficiency, and accessibility benefits of self-driving technology, communities across North America are pushing back—sometimes in surprising ways.

The episode begins with the unexpected battleground of Santa Monica, California, where residents weren't disturbed by the autonomous driving but rather by the incessant beeping of Waymo's fifty-six vehicle fleet. This noise pollution led to creative protest tactics, with locals "stacking" or "coning" the vehicles by placing objects on their hoods to exploit their safety protocols, forcing them to remain frozen until manually reset.

Things escalated dramatically during the "No Kings" protests in Los Angeles in June 2025, when five Waymo vehicles were torched, leading to service suspensions across multiple cities. As Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp confirmed, the company suspended operations in Southern California, San Francisco, Austin, Atlanta, and Phoenix following these incidents.

Deeper concerns are driving this resistance: loss of local control over public spaces, opaque deployment processes, and regulatory systems that seem to favor corporate interests over community input. As one resident told Fox Business, "We've reached out to the city. We've called Waymo. Now, some are trying unconventional tactics."

Beyond community pushback, Steve and Claire explore the potential massive job displacement, with RethinkX estimating up to five million jobs could be lost in the US alone—including 3.5 million truck drivers. The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs report projects 92 million roles could be displaced globally by 2030 due to AI and automation, though it also forecasts a net gain of 78 million new jobs in other sectors.

Privacy concerns take center stage as well, with MIT's Iyad Rahwan's Moral Machine experiment revealing deep cultural divides on how autonomous vehicles should make ethical decisions in unavoidable crash scenarios. Meanwhile, Professor Yingling Fan of the University of Minnesota warns that without careful planning, AVs could worsen existing transportation inequities rather than improve them.

Environmental impacts receive surprising scrutiny, with MIT researcher Soumya Sudhakar revealing that the computing power required for autonomous vehicles could generate greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to Argentina's annual output. If 95% of the global fleet becomes autonomous by 2050, hardware efficiency would need to double every 1.1 years to prevent emissions from "spiralling out of control."

The episode concludes with Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana's insight: "People don't trust what they're not familiar with... We see people take their first ride and they go from a skeptic, naturally, to a fan because the ride, in some ways, is not very exciting—and we don't want the ride to be exciting."

About Auto Agentic:

Auto Agentic (www.autoagentic.ai) is pioneering AI-driven solutions transforming automotive retail. Founded in 2024, we deliver intelligent, adaptive solutions designed to help dealerships streamline operations, optimize sales performance, and elevate customer experience. With a focus on ethical AI, seamless integrations, and real-time insights, Auto Agentic empowers dealership teams—never replaces them—unlocking new levels of productivity and profitability.

Our suite of intelligent agents handles everything from lead nurturing and inventory optimization to service appointment management and customer follow-ups. By using AI to replace time-consuming tasks and augmenting decision-making with advanced analytics, Auto Agentic helps dealerships stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

Available on all major podcast platforms. New episodes every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

A Deep Dive into Next-Generation Energy Storage

As electric vehicle adoption accelerates and supply chain vulnerabilities become critical strategic concerns, a fierce technological race has emerged between solid-state, sodium-ion, and advanced manufacturing innovations that will reshape the automotive landscape.

The Lithium-Ion Plateau and China's Strategic Dominance

Current lithium-ion technology is approaching theoretical energy density limits while China maintains control over 60% of global battery production capacity, creating both technological and geopolitical imperatives for innovation.

Solid-State Breakthroughs: From Lab to Road

The most significant developments in 2025 have validated solid-state batteries as commercially viable. Stellantis and Factorial Energy achieved a major milestone in April 2025, successfully validating automotive-sized solid-state battery cells with 375 Wh/kg energy density that can fast charge from 15% to 90% in just 18 minutes while operating in extreme temperatures from -30°C to 45°C.

Mercedes-Benz made history in February 2025 when their engineers, collaborating with Factorial, brought the first car powered by a lithium-metal solid-state battery to public roads. Meanwhile, Toyota's partnership with Idemitsu Kosan continues advancing solid-state commercialization, while QuantumScape completed installation of their revolutionary "Cobra" heat treatment system in December 2024, achieving 844 Wh/L energy density with 12.2-minute fast-charging capabilities.

Sodium-Ion: The Abundant Alternative

Sodium-ion technology offers a compelling alternative focused on supply chain independence and cost reduction. With sodium being approximately 1,000 times more abundant than lithium, these batteries promise 20-30% cost advantages over lithium-based alternatives while eliminating dependence on geopolitically sensitive supply chains.

Manufacturing Revolution and Economic Transformation

Tesla's 2019 acquisition of Maxwell Technologies brought dry electrode processing technology that's now being adopted globally by companies including Panasonic, LG, and CATL. This manufacturing innovation dramatically reduces factory footprint and energy consumption while improving production economics.

Safety Innovations and Fast-Charging Breakthroughs

BYD's Blade Battery has set new safety standards by passing the rigorous nail penetration test using lithium iron phosphate chemistry in a unique form factor. University of Waterloo researchers achieved remarkable fast-charging capabilities, developing architectures that enable 0-80% charging in under 15 minutes without degradation.

About Auto Agentic:

Auto Agentic (www.autoagentic.ai) is pioneering AI-driven solutions transforming automotive retail. Founded in 2024, we deliver intelligent, adaptive solutions designed to help dealerships streamline operations, optimize sales performance, and elevate customer experience. With a focus on ethical AI, seamless integrations, and real-time insights, Auto Agentic empowers dealership teams—never replaces them—unlocking new levels of productivity and profitability.

Our suite of intelligent agents handles everything from lead nurturing and inventory optimization to service appointment management and customer follow-ups. By using AI to replace time-consuming tasks and augmenting decision-making with advanced analytics, Auto Agentic helps dealerships stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

Available on all major podcast platforms. New episodes every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

The cybersecurity landscape has deteriorated rapidly. According to Upstream Security's latest analysis, the automotive sector experienced 409 publicly reported cybersecurity incidents in 2024—a staggering 39% increase from the 295 incidents recorded in 2023. Even more concerning, massive-scale attacks impacting millions of vehicles jumped from just 5% of incidents in 2023 to 19% in 2024—a nearly four-fold increase that signals a fundamental shift in how cybercriminals are targeting our industry.

VicOne's 2025 Automotive Cybersecurity Report, released this past March, estimates that cyberattacks between 2022 and 2024 cost the industry tens of billions of dollars. This isn't theoretical risk anymore—it's real financial impact hitting bottom lines across the entire automotive ecosystem, from OEMs to suppliers to dealerships.

The Technical Reality: Rolling Supercomputers Under Attack

Modern vehicles have evolved into what the industry now calls software-defined vehicles (SDVs), containing over 100 million lines of code—with some projections suggesting this could reach 650 million lines by the end of 2025. To put this in perspective, that's more complex than most enterprise software systems running Fortune 500 companies.

The latest VicOne data reveals that 77% of automotive vulnerabilities are found within onboard systems—not in charging infrastructure or cloud platforms, but in the cars themselves. The infotainment system used to stream music could be the same pathway a hacker uses to access critical vehicle functions.

Criminal Sophistication: Organized Groups Target Automotive

We're no longer dealing with individual hackers. Organized criminal groups like Cactus, LockBit, Play, and 8Base are specifically targeting the automotive industry with significant resources and coordination. These groups have exploited vulnerabilities in VPN appliances and cloud platforms to disrupt OEMs, dealerships, and supply chains with devastating effect.

The Path Forward: Security by Design

As Max Cheng, CEO of VicOne, notes: "A proactive, multilayered approach to cybersecurity across all levels of the supply chain will help the automotive industry stay ahead of evolving threats and thrive in pursuing the unprecedented opportunities ahead."

The industry must embrace what experts call "security by design"—building protection into every layer from the ground up rather than bolting security onto existing systems. This includes the critical capability for over-the-air security updates, which has evolved from a convenience feature to a fundamental requirement.

About Auto Agentic:

Auto Agentic (www.autoagentic.ai) is pioneering AI-driven solutions transforming automotive retail. Founded in 2024, we deliver intelligent, adaptive solutions designed to help dealerships streamline operations, optimize sales performance, and elevate customer experience. With a focus on ethical AI, seamless integrations, and real-time insights, Auto Agentic empowers dealership teams—never replaces them—unlocking new levels of productivity and profitability.

Our suite of intelligent agents handles everything from lead nurturing and inventory optimization to service appointment management and customer follow-ups. By using AI to replace time-consuming tasks and augmenting decision-making with advanced analytics, Auto Agentic helps dealerships stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

Available on all major podcast platforms. New episodes every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.