Alex Roy

Alex, are all those accurate?

Those are accurate, and thanks so much for the renaissance introduction.

Well, I mean, it involves getting a car in New York City and driving as fast as you can to Los Angeles by any means necessary without any sanctioning body or cooperation from the government.

This has become an underground thing in recent years.

But what's fascinating and totally relevant to EVs and AVs is that 100 years ago, car companies would pay drivers.

A motorcycle racer named Erwin Baker to drive across country as fast as possible to demonstrate that personally owned internal combustion vehicles were easier to own than a horse and more liberating than trains.

And he did this hundreds of times with massive media coverage.

In the modern era, this has gone underground.

But back then, this was how you marketed new transportation technologies.

And that's what fascinates me about the cannonball.

Well, when I did it for the first time 17 years ago, I had a very hard time getting anyone to even cooperate in validating it.

So I got a Wired magazine to send to journalists.

I had a plan overhead that followed the car with cameras, video, and witnesses at both ends, and GPS trackers.

I mean, today, even in the underground races, hundreds of people will follow the progress of the car in real time.

But 17 years ago, that type of tracking did not exist.

So the shortest route from Midtown Manhattan to Los Angeles is really the central route, of which there's really only seven or eight traffic lights.

It's 99.99999% on the interstate.

A few streets in New York City, a little bit in Ohio, and then getting off to get gas.

My maximum speed was 160 miles an hour.

Others have gone faster than I have in the ensuing years, as fast as 175 miles an hour.