Mobility Matters | April 4th, 2025 | Episode 31

April 4, 2025 | Episode 31 | 1,844  words ~9 minute read

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

Hi all - here's your latest version of Mobility Matters. And while the news over the last 48 hours has been pretty much all tariffs, all the time, I'm going to explicitly ignore that in favor of trends that have longer term histories behind them and wait to see how those tariffs eventually end up before adding them in here. I'd suggest this time taking a look at the SAF news from BCG and the Shipping predictions from Lloyds and DNV around the upcoming MEPC. With more time the reports from IEA and Carlyle are really thought provoking.

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Recent Reports

• The Carlyle group put out a report covering the global energy market in the context of current geopolitics and, well, it’s not really a “fun” read but it’s still one you should read. One overarching theme is that you cannot separate energy security and national security, and on that note the triptych below is striking, but it also tells a story as to why Europe may lead on renewables for the coming decades: they can be produced locally regardless of geology.

• The ICCT does a good regular roundup of the car market in Europe and their progress vs various compliance obligations - I don’t link to it every time, but it’s a great resource to stay on top of. I thought these league tables in the latest edition were really fascinating. 

• One of the flagship reports every year is the Global Energy Review from the IEA; this version is pretty clear that energy demand is rising; with demand for electricity rising almost twice as fast as wider energy demand due to higher demand for cooling, rising consumption by industry, the electrification of transport and the growth of data centres. Sometimes I like to pick out optimistic graphs just for the sake of optimism, so here’s one showing the emissions we avoided using last year by having already deployed some low carbon tech.

• PWC put out a report last month on AI opportunities in Automotive, and normally I think really highly of the stuff the Strategy& folks put out…but I’m skeptical we are going to see margin increases along these lines:

• This whitepaper from World Fund is really timely, and it argues that a key pillar of the future resilience of Europe (but applicable anywhere) is energy security, and the easiest way to do that is renewables.  Smart stuff.
• National Grid has updated their innovation strategy as a part of the outcomes from some consultations, the new RIIO schema, and general innovation agenda moving forward.
• This is nerdy, so no pull chart (but I did a LinkedIn post if you want images), but Uber’s recent earnings release included some slides on their thinking around AV.  Worth going through.
• I didn’t know CBRE put out a regular quarterly report on infrastructure, here’s Q1’25, this chart on where money has been going was instructive showing a relatively balanced distribution with digital infrastructure and transport sectors being the largest movers

• The IEA has not been idle by the way, they also published Electricity 2025, and weirdly the main chart that blew my mind was this.  China is the clear leader in EV, it’s far and away the leader in DCFC, and yet…look how small that EV contribution is to the overall electricity growth.  Stunning really.

• DNV published a report on energy efficiency technologies and measures for maritime; first of all this is exactly where I think the most progress will be made for the foreseeable future (new fuel ship orders are just not getting traction beyond LNG), but second you can see from the table below how wrong that statement would have been in the past…so maybe it still is.  The uptake of these is low across the board.

• In news that should surprise exactly no one, the London ULEZ zone has been really effective at, you guessed it, decreasing emissions.  More here from the Mayor’s office.
• ICCT and RAP jointly published a paper on the cost savings of smart charging using France as a case study, and the most interesting part of the report to me was this quote:

“The need for (grid) reinforcement is generally below 10% as there is ample capacity on the grid. This is a specific characteristic of the French grid, due to its high share of direct electrified heating. Because of this electric heating demand, the demand and peak of the French power system correlate more closely to temperature than is the case in other EU power systems. The average grid utilisation therefore is lower and there will be less need for grid extension if utilisation increases (by smart EV charging) than in other, less temperature-related power systems.” 

Recent News

• Remember when we were talking about Nissan and Honda’s romance turning sour? It also cost the Nissan CEO his job as they have appointed their internal “car guy” as his replacement. At the end of the day; Nissan needs a savior, if that will be Honda or someone else is still TBD.
• 49% of new city buses purchased in the EU in 2024 were zero emission. This has long been a place where pundits and predictors (including yours truly) have been optimistic and it’s good to see that coming through in the numbers.
• Yeah, so 600 km range, 44 tonnes of weight and a 40 minute 20%-80% MCS charging time is a really impressive HD vehicle.  Volvo just announced they would take orders starting in Q4.
• Consumer Reports put out some research on charging experiences..and these are really interesting responses:

• The UK announced their new efforts to create HD charging infrastructure through a coordinated plan.

• The Ex-CEO of Waymo had some, um, ”colorful” things to say about Tesla’s efforts in the space.
• A Senior VP at Maersk put out a blog post in advance of IMO negotiations in early April on future clean fuels in shipping, and it’s really worth a read just to get through the really good explainer on the compliance math between GHG fuel intensity targets and achieved GHG fuel intensity.
• On the same topic here’s a good preview from Lloyd’s on the upcoming April IMO MEPC, at which both short and medium term GHG measures should be the main topics and outcomes. You can also watch a 10 minute video from DNV on the same topic.
• This article from BCG on SAF is a good, data-rich read. It’s a pretty tough picture though - 2024 production of SAF was just 0.3% of global jet fuel production, and bio-SAF is projected to miss 2030 production targets by 30% with e-SAF doing even worse and being short by 45%.  Lot’s of work to do in this sector.
• A private consortium has funded and launched a heavy duty EV trial (44 tonnes).  Should be an interesting one to keep an eye on.
• Heathrow, one of the world's busiest, most internationally connected airports, was shut down by basically one single point of failure in their utility connection.
• Here’s a fun article from McKinsey on the tactics for growing a startup in the mobility sector.
• Famed law firm Wilson Sonsini writes on the lessons from Honda getting a $600k fine for data privacy violations. It’s not so much the size of the fine but the way this likely foreshadows an increasing eye on data in vehicles, from and actors, OEM’s, regulators and customers. Once things become computers, they inherit computer problems.
• Teslas on the road have been seeing a marked drop in resale value, I have no reasonable explanation for this as it’s before any brand damage from what’s been going on since January…

• You can color me skeptical we will see this tie up of Virgin and Joby ever produce a real flying taxi service.
• Very good look at the battery sector from IEA.
• Volkswagen “will never, ever make this mistake again” say’s their chief designer when describing why they are abandoning the digital touchscreens in favor of physical buttons.

Consolidation in Mobility

• Sort of the opposite of the “consolidation” theme of this section, but I guess Rivian has incubated a micromobility company internally and is now spinning that out? Which makes sense, because making a new OEM is a super easy thing to do that leaves lots of room left over for creating an entirely new thing. 🙄
• Dealer software company Kenect has bought Auto Labs to expand their offering.
• Does Canoo have life in it after declaring bankruptcy? My bet is no but the former CEO has bought some of its assets out of administration.
• Dutch electric two-wheeler brand Brekr has been acquired by EcoMotion
• Not really a consolidation play yet, but ZeroNorth has raised funding explicitly targeted at M&A.
• Whenever the news is “CEO secretly leaves under unclear circumstances” things are always worse than they are reported to be.
• Porsche acquired V4Drive
• Oh good, the mobility sector hasn’t learned enough lessons from the SPAC boom of ‘21/’22.  Kodiak Robotics and Ares are in talks to complete a SPAC.
• After eVTOL company Volocopter has filed for insolvency, Diamond Aircraft Industries has now stepped in as a potential white knight;  being blunt though, I can’t tell if this is someone buying up a company, talent, IP, or something else…
• Bolt bought Danish ride-hailing company Viggo which was their first acquisition in company history; I’ll admit to at least a little surprise that Bolt has gotten as big as they did with no M&A in the toolkit given how the rest of the industry has relied on inorganic.

Longer form items

• It’s entirely possible that I’m the only one who finds this interesting, but I doubt it. Here’s why DCFC are so expensive. 
• Definitely not a “politics free” podcast, but a realistic look at how the average person might be thinking about the FAA right now.
• Ryan Fisher from BNEF gives a good interview on all things EV in this podcast (41 minute listen) 
• Famous youtuber and ex-NASA engineer Mark Rober (66m subscribers) did a video that’s best described as Wile E Coyote meets Tesla Autopilot to put their camera only tech up against LIDAR.  Spoiler alert: It doesn’t end well for the Tesla tech pathway, but this one is definitely something that gives tesla fans and tesla haters alike something to hang their hat on. (19 minute video)
• Construction physics is a newsletter I was recently introduced to, and the note they did on developing a supersonic jet engine is really smart stuff. (10 minute read)
• If you’re in the Energy industry you need to know who Daniel Yergin is and have read his books.  This is a great recent essay from the guy and two other really credible authors. (22 minute read)

Links from the group chat

• “The most powerful rocket ever built spinning out of control” is quite a lede.
• I thought this story was an interesting take on AI, its limitations, and our inherent desire to not believe in those limitations.
• Klarna made a lot of news previously by saying they were deleveraging from FTEs in favor of AI.  It seems the truth might be a bit more nuanced.

Special thanks to Felix Leuschner, Mikołaj Budzanowski, Vanessa Trinh Keeling and Matt Johnson for introductions to founders and investors as well as sharing items to include in this missive.