Ever wonder what happened to the transport utopia so many Silicon Valley luminaries once promised us? The one where self-driving cars were going to eliminate traffic, flying cars were going to have us soaring above cities, and Hyperloops would rapidly whisk us to cities around the globe?

Well, that’s what I set out to dissect in Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.

The book has already been circulating for a few years, but last week it was released in paperback with a new afterword containing some reflections on what’s happened since its initial release. When I was writing it, I could hardly fathom how it would still be relevant even a year later, but I assume that’s how many new authors feel.

For me, Silicon Valley’s deceptions about self-driving cars, ride-hailing services, and so many of its other big ideas for transportation were not just about mobility; they illustrated how these founders approach real problems in our complicated society and how their tech fixes are not fit for purpose. Road to Nowhere may, in part, be a case study on transportation, but it reveals a broader flaw in the model of tech solutionism that billionaires have been selling us for years.

Of course, the transport ideas I criticize in the book haven’t magically materialized or significantly improved either. I dig into the history of mobility and of the tech industry to illustrate where problems like traffic, road deaths, and environmental damage came from — and how naive a belief that adding some fancy new tech innovation and internet connectivity is going to solve it.

Ultimately, it was following and digging into companies like Uber and Tesla that helped me form the critical perspective I have on Silicon Valley today — and certainly on Elon Musk too. I hope the book takes people on that journey, and unpacks it to such a degree that they have a better framework they can yse to question these companies and their big ideas.

You can grab a copy from Bookshop or directly from Verso Books. I also made a webpage with a bunch of additional information, interviews, and all that fun stuff.