The end of the straddle bus and the beginning of an uneasy truce between President elect Trump and the entire tech community are the stories du jour as Hong Kong 3’s Phil Whelan and I catch up for our weekly chat on all things future, tech and whatever else.

The straddle bus was a great Chinese innovation that’s been around for a while and in August this year seemed to gain new energy as a prototype hit the streets for a 300 metre journey, but since then its been awfully quiet and we’ve just found out why.

Only a couple of months since its supposed triumph, the bus is sitting in a yard derelict and unloved and its innovators are being accused of illegal crowdfunding, unauthorized road testing, creating a vehicle that was not tall enough to allow anything other than a passenger car to travel under it and building a vehicle that is potentially too heavy to travel safely on any Chinese freeway.

So was it hype, bravado, or stupidity?

I’m not quite sure but although the idea doesn’t have commercial merit (yet), I loved it for its ability to look at a growing “car” problem and instead of taking a same old same old approach to solving it, went radical looking for a possible new solution.

In  our other main story this week we talked about President elect Trump’s impending sit down with America’s tech giants, reminding me of Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus, Trump was in a room of people that he has spent the last two years ridiculing and likewise most of them him and now they are going to sit down and try and play nice – hope they check for knives as they come in, Postscript – after the meeting Trump told them to phone him directly if they have any issues or job creation thoughts – he has no hierarchy they need to work through and remains available to them

Another great chat so have a listen now (14 mins 13 secs)