For this episode, Antonin Léonard sat down with Alex Haag, CEO and co-founder of Futurail.

Alex spent more than 15 years building autonomous systems in the automotive industry from being among the first engineers on Autopilot at Tesla to leading Audi’s autonomy unit.

Today, he’s applying that same execution discipline to one of Europe’s most critical, and most constrained, infrastructures: rail.

Rail is already one of the most efficient transport systems we have.

In Europe, it is widespread, trusted, and deeply embedded in everyday life.

We Europeans love trains. It’s part of our culture and part of our social contract. And that is precisely why what’s happening matters.

On many secondary lines, the economics no longer work. Capacity exists, but cannot be deployed.

The social cost is tangible: fewer connections, weakened territories, and people increasingly cut off from nearby cities.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why rail autonomy is becoming a strategic necessity for Europe

• How driver shortages and operating costs are pushing the system to its limits

• Why Futurail starts with depot automation to unlock certification

• What it really means to build certifiable AI in open, non-fenced rail environments

• Why autonomous trains are fundamentally different from autonomous cars

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