Mobility Matters | February 10th, 2025 | Episode 29 |

1,817 words ~8 minute read

All opinions expressed below are mine and not those of my employer, Shell Ventures.

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Hi all,

Lot’s to dig through here, so getting right to it I’d recommend the reports from BNEF on energy transition investment trends and the PWC quarterly EV sales update, if maritime is more your bag then the latest from NYK linked to their original 2023 vision document are both worth your while. In the news side, the two sides to the Tesla coin has got to be one of the top stories playing out in ‘25, and I think the consolidation section is really interesting this time.

Recent Reports

BNEF had their annual summit and timed a couple of reports to coincide with it; of interest is their data on energy transition investment trends. I’m cautiously optimistic about the story the below chart tells.

There are several places you can find sales info - for my money PWC’s quarterly report is one of the better ones. My takeaway is that there’s a lot of noise around EV sales growth slowing, but that’s a lot like people not understanding that interest rates falling, but staying above 0, means the number still goes up. See below.

Japanese shipping giant NYK released a white paper on their plan to use CDR technologies to offset their CO2 footprint, aiming to retire 100,000 tons by 2030. This is a good piece of work by an interested party, but I would point towards a previous piece of work by them (their group decarbonization study) that while a bit long at 76 slides, is really good. I would point people to the very last slide which, aside from the technical barriers, explains why shipping is a hard to abate industry. This is the simplest chart I’ve seen of the various relationships in the shipping industry, and there are a lot of boxes and arrows there…

Scientific journal Nature published some research that shows the lifespans of EV vs ICE vehicles are basically collapsing in on each other. You need a bit of knowledge of statistics to dig through the paper (not much, but a bit), but the bottom line is they are approaching the point where there is effectively no difference.

Last episode I mentioned how the aviation industry is set to blow their carbon budget, turns out Shipping is on the same trajectory.
In a continuation of a decade-long trend of the mobility and power industries converging here’s a report from Ember on the EU electricity system, and the long story short is: 2024 was the biggest year for renewable generation ever, the lowest year for fossil generation ever, and the end of coal is in sight.

Volta Foundation has their annual battery report out and this year I think the interesting aspect is more the consolidation, transactions and insolvencies that are most interesting vs any real technical leaps.

In the January version of Faraday Insights they walk through the maritime industry and the applicability of battery electric propulsion systems. Provided you approach it with an appropriate level of skepticism for shipping vessels, and read it for short-haul ferries and OSV’s, it’s a good read.
Wind Assisted Propulsion (WAP) has been in the news a lot because it’s about as "cool" as shipping propulsion systems can be to the sustainability crowd - it’s “free”, free of emissions, and widely applicable. That hasn’t fixed the issues with it, but DNV has a new whitepaper out on the topic and I found this on sales of WAP systems to be instructive.

Perhaps surprisingly because of how important they are, I’m not a “battery guy”, so when I see smart people putting out smart research I like to pay attention. BCG has a new piece of work on the battery factory of the future that’s a good read. I am gonna paste a slide on future costs here, with the caveat that things like this are always wrong, but sometimes can be instructive.

Innovate UK published some interactive data on the SAF ecosystem - who’s funding, where, and what feedstocks. Worth your time if you’re in the aviation space or equally if you just count airline miles.
A surprisingly underrated source of vehicle sales info and projections is ING, and their most recent review of 2024 and projections for 2025 is highly recommended. This pull chart is a good reminder that we overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in a decade.

Recent News

If you were online at all when the Manhattan congestion scheme went live, you found out pretty quickly which of your contacts lived in New Jersey because people were upset. Turns out though that people respond to incentives: commute times have dropped due to eased congestion and subway ridership is up while crime is down.
Polestar has launched their home and OTG charging product, similar to a few other OEMs, it’s another proof point that vehicles will no longer be separated from their energy the way they have been in the ICE age.
The German Chancellor announced at Davos that the EU is considering subsidies to support EU OEM’s in the face of tough competition from China.
Previously I wrote about how the new US Secretary of Transportation spoke about how EV’s avoid paying for roads through gas tax avoidance, and here is the NY Times doing a deeper dive on how states are addressing this through higher registration fees.
We’ll get to Honda’s inorganic drama elsewhere here, but this news about them considering a sub-$30k EV would be amazing to see. I should at some point make a sign about “cheaper EV’s is the answer to more EV’s” so I can just point to it every time something like this comes up.
Genesis is planning on being EV only in the UK by 2026. This is good! But also let’s be honest, Genesis was only 0.04% of new car sales in Jan of ‘25.
I’ve been fairly up front about my skepticism on the shared scooter model as a sustainable business, but I’m wrong a fair bit so I’m always open to change my mind in the face of new evidence. Unfortunately while Voi is reporting a profitable 2024, I struggle to call this healthy: $138m revenue, $17.9m adjusted EBITDA, and $104k adjusted EBIT. If that’s as good as things can look when they are adjusted, I’m skeptical what the GAAP numbers might be. Your mileage may vary…
It’s almost unfair that the Voi announcement came out at the same time that the National Association of City Transportation Officials came out with a report arguing for more governmental subsidies for the model because it’s so economically fragile even with record ridership.

Sometimes small companies need to “fire” a customer” because they are just too hard to deal with. This is similar but on a completely different scale: UPS slashing Amazon volume by 50% in push for profitability.
I put this slide out there the other day based on two competing data points (from Elektrek and PWC) and still don’t know what to make of it…is Tesla facing a structural obstacle? Or are they still the undisputed king of EV’s in the western world?

The biggest story in transport in the UK the past few weeks has been the potential Heathrow expansion. Without getting into the politics, it’s tough because while the UK has a “Jet Zero” commitment (love that naming btw), it’s not really bearing out in the numbers. See some images below from Bloomberg that show how stark the problem is and simultaneously how slow the progress has been.

Autonomous has had a big few weeks: Waymo announced testing in Vegas, San Diego, D.C. and Atlanta, and also publicized some data on total trips (25x YoY from August ‘23-’24 - see chart below), but this while total AV miles on California roads dropped 50% YoY due to a small field of players and a few having big problems.

Consolidation in Mobility

Several big deals to talk about, but everything will take a back seat to Honda and Nissan calling off the wedding before anyone even got dressed. Rumors abound that Nissan is still in the market, but that seems to come more from a place of desperation than optimism.
Pro-tip: when a big corporate says they are going to “pause” something…that something needs a material change in the market to resuscitate itself. Anyways, Airbus is “pausing” it’s work on the CityAirbus eVTOL program.
A couple months ago we talked in this section about GM ~~abandoning~~ scaling back it’s Cruise program; Techcrunch is reporting that the move will come with 9 figures worth of savings. One assumes it comes at least partially from a 50% staff reduction.
French e-bike OEM Angell has declared insolvency.
Forest and Bird have announced a major tie-up in London.
United swears (wink wink) they are not in talks to acquire JetBlue.
Monopoly fans rejoice! Shortline Railroad has been bought (more than $200 though)
Zedify, a UK darling of cargo-bike delivery, has announced it’s shutting down.
Corpay has always seemed like a bunch of smart operators, so expanding their presence in Brazil via M&A of Gringo is worth reading and thinking about.
Lufthansa took a small but material position in AirBaltic prior to the latter’s IPO.
There’s something refreshingly long-term about Purolater (Canadian freight and logistics) buying Livingston to boost their cross border trade capabilities.

Longer form items

Nice video update from Ryan Fisher at BNEF on their vision of 2025 for EV’s. (4 minute watch)
It’s weird to say of someone “I’m jealous of their presentations” but it’s also true that Nat Bullard’s annual look at climate tech is something that makes me green with envy. Go read it. (200 slides)
Good listen from Lloyds on why LNG is winning the race in Shipping decarbonization pathways. (23 minutes listen)
Mass and Distance are the only things that matter. That’s the principal argument made here on how to think about decarbonizing transport and the policy impacts. (53 minute listen)
I’m a skeptic of electric aviation, but a skeptic who wants to be convinced. Here’s an interview with the CEO of Heart Aerospace who thinks I’m completely wrong. (56 minute listen)
S&P Mobility has thoughts on autonomous vehicles, and they are based in reality rather than fact. (26 minute listen)

Links from the group chat

Benedict Evans often has smart things to say. This podcast on AI from him is no different (42 minute listen)
You gotta love the Dutch.
NextEra Energy has placed down a fascinating marker on new plant build costs