 Live from Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE. Covering South by Southwest 2017. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. Okay, welcome back everyone. Live coverage of South by Southwest here in Austin, Texas. This is SiliconANGLES theCUBE, our flagship program. When we go out to the events and extract the signal noise, I'm John Furrier. Our next guest is Ali Bahabbazde. Almost, Bahab's the day. Bahab's the day, Bahab's the day. CEO, Chariot, a hot startup that was acquired by Ford Mobility Solutions last September, really innovating in what I call the sharing economy, what's been called, not I call, the sharing economy. But this really highlights the paradigm shift. So Ali, I want to thank you for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me, John. So Chariot, who's one of your cities, it's not only in the Bay Area, but here in Austin, give a quick highlight of what's going on here in Austin for you guys and the freebie for the South by Southwest goers. Yeah, so Chariot is reinventing mass transit by crowdsourcing new routes in neighborhoods that either don't have enough commuter options or there's commuter options, but there's not enough space on buses and trains. So we crowdsource these routes and we launch operations in these neighborhoods once we hit a tipping point and we get vehicles on the road. So we started in San Francisco in 2014. We expanded to Austin and then most recently in September, we got acquired by Ford Smart Mobility and to become a cornerstone of Ford's mobility strategy for many years to come. So this really highlights the sharing economy, as I said, but what's going on is that the users interface of the real world is becoming digital. So obviously cars are not digital yet, they'll be self-driving soon and Ford's announced mass production in five years, but it points to their relationship with others, collaboration. This is the big AI trend that kind of gets surfaced in terms of real world benefits. Yeah, it's incredible. Everyone knows that Ford makes incredible cars, but Ford also wants to be a mobility company as well. And so with this thing that we have in our pockets, the phone, it provides a tremendous amount of data about us commuters, riders, people who are trying to get from A to B. And by harnessing that data, either for now it's given to us by the users themselves. By harnessing that data, we can make some really intelligent and efficient choices about where our vehicles, in our example, 14 passenger Ford Transit wagons, should be and could be to pick people up at the times where they need it the most. All right, Ali, I want to kind of get you to riff on something with me. Okay, imagine you're re-imagining the future. I love that, a reinventing mass transit. So re-imagine some of the amazing things that are possible in your vision. Just kind of roll forward a few years. I mean, we're going to have headsets and grocery reality and holograms. I can bring my experience inside the vehicle. Not only am I just getting a ride somewhere. I mean, in our area in Silicon Valley, the Google buses and the company buses, oh God, Wi-Fi, they're all working away. So I can imagine that you must have a vision for technology into your product. Yeah, indeed. Do you share your vision on that? Yeah, I mean, imagine most people's commute is the twice daily worst part of their day. We've moved the needle, even without a lot of experimental things going on inside the chariot, we've moved it to, it's actually a decent part of your day and you don't have to worry about it anymore. What chariot and Ford is looking forward to doing in the next couple of years is to actually make it, believe it or not, the best part of your day. You mentioned VR, entertainment options, social connecting options with other people in the chariot who you may either want to network with professionally in the future or maybe even socially. Perhaps your next date is on board. And so there's so many things that could be, you could be doing in a chariot because we know your preferences, we know where you're commuting from and to, we know what you want to eat for dinner, we know where you want to go for happy hour on Thursday night and the chariot AI can actually be suggesting to you what chariot to get on, at what time, and these folks are going to be on board with you at that point. So you know I'm craving some buffalo wings, you just pull off the exit and I get some wings or bio break, I got to fit in, oh, John needs to take a bio break. I mean, I'm kind of being over the top but this is kind of what you're thinking, right? Perhaps you're on a diet and the device on your hand or the app, the diet app on your phone knows exactly what you had for breakfast and lunch and perhaps the chariot is headed in a certain neighborhood with a vegetarian option and you've had too much meat in the day. It could suggest to you, hey, get off on this curb because there's a wonderful option here for you to have a non-protein meal. These are- But that's in your vision, you see that future. It's in the future and it's not too distant from where we are right now. What I think is cool between chariot and Ford is, Ford has these incredible resources, also has vision with what they can do in the vehicle. Chariot in a very short amount of time in less than three years, we were able to penetrate a very attractive market of young professionals and actually have them tell us what they want to do, where they want to go from and where they want to go to and we're just scratching the surface right now. All right, so tell me about your experiences here at South by Southwest. What's the vibe of the show? We've seen some touch points around, it's a VR show, some AI, other things that you're observing that you could surface and say as the key story lines of developing on day one of South by Southwest. Yeah, you know, it's my first South by Southwest, John and I was walking over here with a friend that I was remarking to her that I actually feel this is probably what World's fairs were like 100 years ago when people were discovering new technologies and companies like Ford were actually big participants in World's fair. This feels like a 21st century World's fair and I'm just seeing such incredible installations and companies that I've never heard of before looking to make an impression on consumers or future users here. Companies that don't even have a product, don't even have a service in reality right now and are just providing you a peek into the future. So it's my first day here. I can't wait for the next few days. Well it's also a good mashup of creativity, industry and just people, it's a melting pot of just kind of laid back, it's Austin so it's pretty cool here, easy living as they say. Yeah, no, absolutely. And there are people who are looking at what the future can hold and also there are people who are, I can see in the look of their eyes like what is my next startup going to be or where can I take my career next? Is it a smart transportation like Chariot or is it something in VR or AI or something that doesn't even exist today? And so it's great to see this collaboration and people also meeting each other who have never met each other before and breaking clicks and meeting new people for the first time. Alright so a personal question, last question to give you kind of on a personal note. Take your CEO, Chariot, hat off at Forbes Smart Mobility put on your personal alley hat, what are you most excited about? Not with the Chariot but outside of Chariot as you look at the real world, technically speaking, what are you most excited about? What's floating your boat so to speak? You know? Or driving your car or Chariot, riding in a Chariot, you don't have to drive anymore. The first thing that comes to mind is I'm honored that I'm going to have dinner with a bunch of mayors this evening including Mayor Adler and several others. I tell you what, when I started the company three years ago, no one would pick up our phone, regulators, city officials and the like. But now I think that city and urban leaders, whether it's Chamber of Commerce, the mayor's office, the transit authority, the housing authority, whatever the case may be, they really are open to not just innovations in transit but innovations in housing, innovations working together, live work and in a very short three years, I've seen that sea change in the attitude and it's going to be, I think it's a dam that's opened up and I think you're only going to see this momentum accelerate with the civic authorities and innovators and technologists actually working together. It's a real impact. Final, final question since I just one popped in my head. What is AI going to do for your business, your industry, transportation and Chariot? In general, what is AI's impact to your industry? I think AI is going to take cars off the street. It's going because we are going to know where people are coming from and going to at what probable hours and so we can run much more efficient routes and much more efficient networks, run larger vehicles, larger format vehicles as opposed to single occupancy vehicles like you'll see on rainy street tonight. And so that gets me really excited because it doesn't only improve the human experience, it helps the environment and it's all good things. I can't think of a downside for AI in transportation. Well, there might be some disruption and some transition. Let's just take one simple example, parking lots. What are you going to turn them into? I can't wait to see parking lots converted into lower income housing into park, into park. Public easements. Into public easements, into more shared offices. The impact is bigger than people think. Just walk down Brazos Street or Congress Street. It seems like every other building is a parking garage or half of a building is now a parking garage. We have to stop building parking garages. We have to stop providing free parking, both at home and at work so that we can force, transition people into different formats of commuting. So all these jobs that are going away are now being shifted. Now again, idea for people out there watching just get in the business of retrofitting garages into housing. That's a new opportunity. That's my next slide, John. Are you in? I'm in. Seek funding. This is theCUBE here live in South by Southwest at the Intel AI Lounge. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching more after this short break. Thanks.