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Posted May 19, 2026 at 12:08 pm
Please click here for Alex’s corresponding write-up on the ‘Future Trends’ blog from Heptagon Capital.
In this IBKR Podcast episode, we explore how autonomous vehicles are shifting from distant promise to present reality, with 2026 shaping up as a pivotal moment for robotaxis. Alex Gunz from Heptagon Capital joins us to break down how software, data, and AI are redefining transportation, and why the biggest winners may not be the car makers at all.
The following is a summary of a live audio recording and may contain errors in spelling or grammar. Although IBKR has edited for clarity no material changes have been made.
Welcome to today’s episode in which my guest is future technologist Alexander Gunz. Alex is portfolio manager at Heptagon Capital in London. Welcome back, Alex.
Always a pleasure to be on the program, Andrew.
It’s great having you. We always have good conversations. Alex, I want you to explain to the audience what Autopia is. It’s a phrase that you coined back in 2015. What is Autopia?
Well, thanks again, Andrew, for having me on the show. As you know, our focus is on future trends, and we first started writing about autonomous vehicles over a decade ago, and that’s where we coined the phrase Autopia. And the idea is that in a future world, and we’re still not there in 2026, we move to a situation where humans are not responsible for driving cars.
They are driven by computers, and this leads to a total reconfiguring of urban centers. If you think about what a car is as an asset for any individual or for a business, it is something that is typically not used for about 90% of the day. It is also a massively depreciating asset. As we’ll come on to talk about, cars are a major cause of death and accident. So in this Autopian world, many of those problems or issues that we highlighted are simply resolved. And we are… The good news is we are creeping ever closer towards Autopia simply because technology is improving. You just need to listen to someone like Jensen at N-Nvidia. We all know about AI, but when you think about physical or embodied AI, perhaps the best use case that we see today is that in the autonomous vehicle.
And just an FYI, Alex, when I typed Autopia into Microsoft Word, I got the red underlining, which says it’s not a word. So you’ve … Next time we speak, you’ve gotta have that
We need to copyright it, don’t we? Yeah
Yeah. So Alex you described 2026 as the year of the robotaxi and say the industry’s reached an inflection point.
What’s changed recently that moved autonomous vehicles from that long-term vision into something that suddenly feels inevitable?
I think the simple answer, Andrew, is really just proof of concept. So, if you are in San Francisco, I was there about six months ago, you will see an increasing number of robotaxis. I believe they’re being rolled out in– or they’re present, I should say, in something in the order of 20 cities in the United States now.
Trials are taking place in London. You can see other trials underway in cities in Europe such as Berlin, in Tokyo, and also in the Middle East. So we are seeing increased visibility, and visibility naturally breeds familiarity. What– why are we seeing more robotaxis? We answered this to a certain extent in the prior opening comments, and it’s simply because the technology has got better. In other words, the cars are more robust, they’re more reliable. And then as we’ve seen with any other technology, we’ve talked about this on previous programs and previous formats, as the industry scales, costs come down. So actually taking a Waymo in San Francisco is not dissimilar in price to taking an Uber.
And I think really what the evidence shows, the number of miles driven without accident, is that this is an increasingly robust and valid form of transport. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a lovely sunny day whether it’s dark, whether it’s raining these vehicles work. And you’re seeing more and more use cases extend, whether it’s in snow in a city like Denver, whether it’s picking up and dropping off at airports where you have lots and lots of vehicles.
And I think, again, more use cases naturally will breed more demand.
And then of course there’s public opinion. So public opinion around driverless cars seems to flip perhaps once people have actually taken a ride in one. From your own first Waymo experience, what do you think skeptics underestimate most about autonomous vehicles?
I think your point is an absolutely excellent one, Andrew, and the statistics really are quite remarkable. If you take a city like San Francisco, really this is the ground zero, if you will, for where autonomous vehicles are being trialed, and you’re obviously right by Silicon Valley. Prior to them being rolled out, two-thirds of local residents were against the idea.
Fast-forward onto today, two-thirds are in favor. That’s a massive step change, and an equally different survey we published that we commented on this in our own published work, is that if you compare impressions of someone who has ridden in an autonomous vehicle compared to someone who hasn’t, the favorable versus unfavorable ratio is about 50 percentage points higher. So simply having a good experience will, as we said, drive further demand. And really the main reason I believe, we believe, why anyone would likely make that choice above and beyond a financial consideration is simply one of safety. And this is a point that cannot be stressed too heavily.
If you think about it globally auto accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and this is an NHTSA figure. It is the leading cause of death for people aged between five and 29. And so you compare what an autonomous vehicle is like compared to any human, even if they say they’re an experienced driver. So if you’re in an autonomous vehicle, you have 360-degree vision. You will have redundancy built into the car. In other words, if one sensor or lidar or camera breaks or gets damaged, there will be backups. Equally, your computer will not be texting whilst it’s driving. Some people are clearly guilty of that. It won’t be drinking whilst it’s driving. It won’t get distracted while it’s driving. And for all those reasons and simply as we said, these vehicles operating in multiple different weather conditions, traffic conditions, that will really I think, help win over the skeptics.
Alex, you make a strong case that autonomous vehicles could save lives and reshape cities by freeing space, reducing congestion, and rethinking urban design. What’s the most surprising second order effect you expect if robotaxis scale quickly?
Yeah. Again, another great question, Andrew, and it’s still incredibly early days. But I think, you know, there is another fundamental difference we should highlight in an autonomous vehicle compared to a conventional car or taxi, is that whereas humans, people who may own cars or Uber drivers, they will just naturally, by definition, get tired.
They’ll need to take a break. The car, any car in use to transport people from A to B will be off the road for a given period of time. The great thing about autonomous vehicles is that they can be operating almost constantly. Obviously, they need to be refueled, they need to be cleaned, but the amount of time they can be in use is much higher than for conventional vehicles. That’s great news. What it basically means, and because they’re more efficient in terms of getting from A to B, you’ve got a map built in, you’ve got an algorithm that will route you more efficiently than any human driver could possibly do. What this will imply is less congestion, so cleaner, emptier streets.
That should boost pedestrianism. It could boost cycling as well. It will make for healthier, less polluted cities. Equally, if you think about parking, if we don’t need to park cars because they’re in constant use, if there is potentially a higher substitution effect why drive? Why own this depreciating asset when you can simply get in a vehicle that’s operated by a computer?
You can play your own music. It’s much, much safer for all of the reasons we talked about. So all of that in terms of second-order consequences, not only will we have cleaner cities, but we’ll also arguably have more spacious cities. So those areas that were car parks can potentially be turned into parks or greener urban spaces.
If you’re a big building and you’ve got one story allocated to a car park, that could become a gym, it could become a wellness space. So I think, you know, the second-order benefits, and again, it’s part of this vision of Autopia that we’ve talked about, really could be how shall I put it? More consumer friendly cleaner, healthier cities.
I wonder what it would do to overall demand for car production though, Alex.
Yeah, I think that’s a that, that’s a fair question, and you know, I’m sure we’ll come on to talk in a little bit about the value chain and where the value most accrues. But when you’re thinking about second-order implications, there are– these extend way beyond just the auto industry. Think about insurance. Think about businesses that operate car parks. Think about businesses like Avis and other hire companies. I think, you know, we should obviously caveat by saying it’s not a matter of clicking your fingers and and moving to autopia overnight. As I said, we’ve been talking about this for a decade plus. But I think over the longer term, you know, just like we’ve seen in other industries, look where’s Blockbuster today? It doesn’t exist. People use Netflix or Amazon instead. We may well see some consequences like that play out too.
So despite the rapid progress, you’re clear that just one single high-profile accident or cyber failure could slow adoption dramatically. In your view, what’s the biggest unresolved risk that could still derail the road to autopia?
I think there are, I think there are many risks, Andrew, and the… perhaps the biggest one is if you just think it’s a numbers game. So yes, you will be… y- the number of vehicles has gone up tenfold in the last two years. But in the US today, my best guess would be probably fewer than 5,000 autonomous vehicles, a similar number probably in China. So in the grand scheme of things, when there are about 1.3 billion cars in the world, that’s absolutely tiny. I guess what… why I’m sharing those figures is simply to make the point that autonomous vehicles or the autonomous industry has yet to be proven or tested at scale. That is the number one consideration. The second, as you alluded to, is this one high-profile accident. There is still a huge gap, I sense, between perception and reality. We said once people have been in these vehicles, once people have seen them around, the familiarity breeds comfort. And then think about what happened in San Francisco in December, what happened in I believe it was Wuhan or a big city in China last month. If you have some sort of technical or electrical failure and your fleet of autonomous vehicles suddenly grin- grinds to a halt, that’s something which can cause a lot of problems. It can create a lot of discomfort. It can have a very damaging impact on perception. And then I guess the final point I’d make, which sort of segues naturally from the prior one, is think about it like this. You know, we have talked on prior programs, Andrew, and pretty much every time we discuss future trends, you know, in any sense, it begins and it ends with data. Our very first thematic piece said, “Look, data will have zero value unless you secure it, you store it, and you analyze it.” And then think about it like this. What is an autonomous vehicle? Crudely speaking, it’s a computer on wheels. So imagine a scenario where a bad actor, a malicious actor, compromises a vehicle and that causes an accident, it causes a standstill. That could potentially have a very damaging effect.
Looking at the competitive landscape where players such as Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, and Uber, and also the wider tech stack, where do you think the real value ultimately accrues? Is it owning the vehicles, controlling the software, or aggregating demand?
Great question. Simple answer, Andrew, it’s simply too early to know. That- that’s not a cop-out for a few reasons. I guess, point one would be, as we said, look, the industry is still in a very nascent stage. Point two is, look the early leaders are not always the ultimate winners. I mean, think about what– rewind twenty-five years, most people you knew probably had an AOL internet account. Where’s AOL today? So I think that’s an important element of caution to have. I guess the third point would be, at least if the industry, the au- autonomous vehicle industry follows the precedent of other industries, then to our mind, the most value will accrue highest up the stack. So in other words, when you think about what is the most proprietary element in all of this, what takes the time it is not building the vehicle. Indeed, even if you take Waymo today, their vehicles are either Jaguar or Hyundai vehicles. They’ll be buying in the the LIDAR, the cameras, the sensors from OEMs. That the value add or the secret sauce, if you will, is in the algorithm. So actually telling the car, “Look, if there’s a, I don’t know a ball r- rolls across the road, you need to stop,” even if you’ve never seen a ball in the real world before. Having the algorithm that does that, if you think about it, it, it– like with any AI, this is self-improving. The more miles you drive, the better you should get at it, the more unpredictable scenarios you can possibly attempt to preempt. So we think the people who own the software, the people who own the algorithms, who sit highest up the stack, potentially are the biggest beneficiaries. I, I guess the final point I’d make in this discussion, Andrew, would be again, if you think about conversations we’ve had about other future trends, one of the approaches we often deploy and think about, try and think about intelligently at Heptagon Capital is owning the metaphorical shovel makers rather than the actual miners. So in other words, again, come back to this principle: what is an autonomous vehicle? It is a computer on wheels. So therefore, actually having the semiconductor architecture, the storage systems for that data if autonomous vehicles are a big data exercise, then companies that play in those fields clearly should benefit.
Brilliant. Alex, you mentioned the thematic notes. Where can people learn more?
All the output we have produced is on our website, so that is www.heptagon-capital.com.
Lovely. Alexander Gunz, portfolio manager at Heptagon Capital in London. Thank you very much for joining me today.
Thanks again, Andrew.
And to the audience, if you enjoyed today’s podcast, don’t forget to tell everybody. Share it, like it and subscribe wherever you download your podcasts from. Bye for now.
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