Theo Leggett
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
People have been trying to design self-driving vehicles for decades. Back in the 1960s, the idea was you could drive your car onto special tracks which would guide you to your destination hands-free.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
It never really caught on. But today, genuine self-driving cars do exist, and I'm about to try one out.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
The car is an electric Nissan LEAF. It's been developed by a consortium including Nissan, other private firms, research groups and government agencies. And it's being tried out on the narrow roads, potholes and blind bends that are so familiar in rural Britain.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
It's actually going quite fast. The project has been going for eight years. The test cars have covered 16,000 miles. They've learned to cope with motorways. They've been tried on some of London's busiest streets, where they've even used roadside cameras to pick out hazards well in advance. And most recently, they've been pounding along rural roads.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
Back in the workshop, the engineer leading the project, Bob Bateman, tells me how it all works.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
It's certainly impressive, though travelling at 60 miles per hour on bumpy roads in what amounts to a mobile computer is a little disconcerting at first. But what exactly is the point of it all? David Moss is Nissan's Head of Research and Development in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
Driverless taxis are already a reality in some parts of the world, in cities in the United States and China, for example. But they can only operate in carefully defined areas, and their performance hasn't always been flawless, as this man, who ended up trapped doing circuits of a car park in Phoenix, Arizona, found out.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
Meanwhile, door-to-door self-driving for private motorists remains a long way off, according to Professor David Bailey of Birmingham Business School.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
True self-driving cars were once seen as science fiction.
Global News Podcast
Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
There is still a long way to go, but engineers insist they're now firmly on track to turn futuristic fantasy into day-to-day reality.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
It does feel like Groundhog Day. This is clearly something that President Trump thinks is important. And the first time round, when tariffs were introduced in 2018, there was a fall in the volume of metals being exported from other countries into the United States. Now, one of the objectives behind all this, stated last time, was to boost employment in the US steel sector.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
That didn't really happen. And then as countries reacted to those tariffs, what we saw was a network of retaliatory sanctions, but also a network of exemptions. So a number of companies, for example, were able to continue exporting steel into the United States without any kind of duty because they were producing tariffs. types of steel that weren't available in the United States.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
So what you tend to find with these blanket announcements from Donald Trump, they look much bigger than they end up being because... In a sense, it can be as full of holes as Swiss cheese. You get a lot of exemptions, both in the tariffs that are imposed and in the retaliation that blocks like the European Union put in place.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
Well, the European Union does have products that it targets from the United States. So last time round, for example... Agricultural products were targeted. Also, quintessentially American products like bourbon whiskey or certain types of jeans. So we can assume that if these tariffs go ahead and they are not in place as yet, then the EU and other trading blocks will find ways of replying in kind.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
Well, in terms of steel, it's almost certain Canada is going to be out there, Mexico as well. And these were the two countries that were due to have been hit, of course, by 25% tariffs across the board until a last-minute stay of execution happened, and those tariffs were suspended for 30 days.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
So we know that Donald Trump likes to use the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tactic in order to obtain concessions that can be politically useful. It may be that this is what he's doing in this case.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
Yes, what's interesting here is that these tariffs that have been imposed by China, they're on some $14 billion worth of imports. But in the context of what China imports from the United States, that's a trade worth about $165 billion a year. So you can see it's a relatively small proportion of imports from the United States.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
And I think what China is doing here and what analysts say China is doing here is putting out a warning saying that we can and we will retaliate. But at the moment, they don't want to antagonize President Trump too much. They don't want a full blown trade war, as it were. So merely showing statement of potential intent.