• Question of the Day: How Many Chinese Automakers Do You Know?

    Question of the Day: How Many Chinese Automakers Do You Know?
    Way back in the last century, the world was facing a multitude of problems, and in order to inspire confidence in Americans, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt — a big car fan! — told the country, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” Fast forward nearly 100 years, U.S. automakers are facing, well, a multitude of problems. However, no statesman is stepping up to assuage the worries of top executives at car companies with a similar statement. In fact, many are po
  • Tales From the Beat — Episode 148: Strategic Global Media’s Scott Merritt and Dwain Schenck

    Tales From the Beat — Episode 148: Strategic Global Media’s Scott Merritt and Dwain Schenck
    In episode 148 of Tales From the Beat, Strategic Global Media founder and CEO Scott Merritt and partner Dwain Schenck tackle divisive issues with host/journalist Ed Garsten that include who is a journalist and what is the toughest and most misunderstood job in PR. They also bat around the effects of AI in story pitching and Ed reveals a boo boo he made when he hopped over to corporate PR from journalism. TTAC Creator Ed Garsten hosts " Tales from the Beat," a podcast about the automotive a
  • AI Agents Tried to Drive a Corolla, Crashing on 8 of 11 Runs

    AI Agents Tried to Drive a Corolla, Crashing on 8 of 11 Runs
    The dream of a general-purpose AI that can do anything your phone's chatbot does, including pilot a two-ton vehicle, just got a reality check. Researchers handed frontier models complete control of a Toyota Corolla and watched most of them fail spectacularly before the first turn. Researchers Aditya Ramabadran, Simon Mahns, and Tobias Gessler built DrivingBench, a test designed to see how well off-the-shelf AI agents like Claude, GPT, and Grok handle actual driving. The hardware was borrowed fro