Mobility Matters | October 8th, 2026 | Episode 35

October 8th, 2026 | Episode 35 | 1623 words ~7 minute read

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

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Hi all,

Welcome to the 35th edition of Mobility Matters. Lot’s on trucking in here, and I would strongly recommend the reports from Strategy& and Carbon Tracker, plus the investor day presentation from Aurora. Outside of trucking the podcast with Pony AI’s CFO is particularly instructive in both what their strategy is, and how to effectively and crisply communicate a strategy. You may not agree with it, but I bet you will understand it.

Recent Reports

• The IEA has issued its first ever report on Electrification, and it’s well worth the read. From a transport perspective they reckon about half of current ground transport can electrify competitively today, if battery prices keep falling that number just goes up.
• If you know me, then I’ve probably spoken to you about heavy duty electrification. It’s a thing I think a lot about. This report from ICCT is a great primer as to why; in their low case we see the EU putting 75TWh to feeding trucks! That’s insane! And yet I would bet good money we find ourselves well above the low case! The grid guys must be simultaneously excited and terrified.

• More on Trucking: this is an excellent report from Strategy& going over the current HGV market. Read the whole thing.

• Thinking still more about Trucking, Carbon Tracker has a report on the industry reaching a tipping point. Good deal of good insights here, and I found this OEM chart instructive:

• T&E has their regular update out on BEV in Europe. I would be surprised if anyone here was surprised by the current state of the market, but the work is well done and well researched. I also particularly liked this graphic.

• McKinsey has their 2026 tech trends report out and it’s 143 pages of interesting. One full section on mobility that I’d recommend everyone here take a look at.
• Every year DNVs Maritime Forecast is good reading, this year is no different.

Recent News

• China’s Electricity Council announced some growth stats, not all mobility related but some of the stunning ones were BEV/NEV related: 

EV charging in China was 17.2 TWh in August, up 51.2% year-on-year. That's equivalent to roughly ~1.3 million barrels of oil a day, in a global oil market that shifts about 100m bpd. Just the change from last year cuts global oil demand by 0.5m bpd.

• Waymo is scaling really fast, TechCrunch has a good breakdown here. The really good news is that their safety numbers are showing some really big improvements vs human drivers (270 million autonomous miles and 870 avoided injuries, & crashing 82% less).
• In other AV/ADAS news  Mercedes and Wayve have inked a deal to bring Wayve’s AV tech on board.
• Maybe just me, but both Samsara and Geotab announcing fuel cards or fuel card like features is an interesting bit of scope creep from where they have traditionally not ventured in order to go partnership routes instead. 
• This NYT headline seems a bit darker than what’s happening in reality. School buses remain a great (and specific to the US) use case for EVs given their duty cycles. I wouldn’t worry too much about this current slow down, even though the infra costs are real, the benefits are too, and better buses show up every year.
• Speaking of buses, The Guardian really outdid themselves with this article on bus journeys in London slowing down and the data analysis that comes with it. I’m a sucker for charts and graphics like this and this is well worth the read.
• One more; Toyota has a new hydrogen bus out with better range, but given how many cities are (rightly) giving up on H2 for mobility, one has to wonder why… 
• I sort of struggle to get my head wrapped around this from Geely that claims not only incredible charge rates, but some sort of battery SoH healing capability? What’s that saying about sufficiently advanced tech being indistinguishable from magic? This seems like magic.
• This may be unpopular, but this report on Tesla’s having an abnormally high rate of salvage titles seems to me to be less about being an EV, and more about choices Tesla has made in manufacturing that lend themselves to either no issues, or big issues while on the road (think megacasting and structurally integrated battery systems/architecture, but also the integration of subassemblies).
• And just to sorta help hammer that point home, EV’s are showing a significant separation in value at high mileages. I guess having fewer moving parts really does matter!

• I could not agree more with Ionna’s CEO here. We have to get EV charging to be profitable as an industry, and EV penetration alone probably won’t do it.
• AUDI and their EU dealer footprint are getting ready to have a good old fashioned dust-up on whether or not the former can import the cars the latter make within the JV with SAIC.
• It’s not everyday a freight company gets accused of RICO violations
• Boeing is having a very bad day with the FAA delaying approving the 737 MAX10.
• Aurora had an investor day and aside from being pretty, the slides are packed with info. A lot of articles are talking about 30k trucks deployed, but I’m more interested in 60% margins. At that level why wouldn’t you try and flood the zone?
• September was a good month for alternative fueled oceangoing vessels per DNV, but there is a long way to go. 
• Fascinating piece by the FT on the luxury end of the auto market and its unique transition pathway. 
• FedEx bought a bunch of BEVs from Harbinger. It’s not for PR, it’s because they are cheaper and work better! 
• Daimler had a big presence at IAA, and Freightwaves does a good job of skirting the line between being a PR outfit and journalism in describing everything they said. I’m personally skeptical of 35k MCS chargers in Europe mainly because that’s a lot of utility connections in not a lot of time.
• Recently we’ve spent a bit of time here on the trials and tribulations VW and JLR are facing, but it’s wider than that and is more of a European auto industry problem, see this piece on Volvo’s recent struggles, or this one on how its current CEO (who was its ex-CEO) is now on his way out. Again. 
• But let's be clear, the US auto industry isn’t in the same situation mainly because of tariff and non-tariff barriers to Chinese OEMs. They aren’t in a better position from a manufacturing, cost basis or innovation perspective, they are simply behind a big wall. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe thinks he has the fix.
• For my money though I’d be looking at the Ford Fathom as the candle in the dark that is the US auto industry (ex-Tesla, who for all their issues, get the problem). I hope this launch goes well, otherwise I am assuming the rest of the industry won’t think about making $30k EVs, and that’s the wrong lesson to learn. And it was not a risk free decision! They had to give up a lot!
• I’ve always found The Jones Act to be a fascinating bit of legislation that involves politics, history, war and everything else. This is a good piece about its current state.

Consolidation in Mobility

• Uber is spending $2.3b buying ezCater, furthering their efforts in food delivery in a slightly different way.
• The Hapag-Lloyd/Zim deal just keeps dragging on. I bet it gets done, but timing and restrictions will matter a lot.
• Airbus, Leonardo and Thales keep trying to make their merger work, and Airbus seems to be offering up a few sacrifices to get the deal across the line. 
• Alvys and Optym find themselves splitting up the remnants of LoadOps.
• Freightwaves has a good compilation of quite a few (16!) trucking bankruptcies in less than a month.. 
• Karos acquires BlaBlaCar’s car sharing business.
• CMA CGM (finally) finalizes their $1.4B buyout of FedEx Supply Chain 
• Evri is making US market entry through the purchase of Cross Border Connect. 
• C.H. Robinson is acquiring RXO for $5.8b, and one wonders if this type of transformational transaction leads to a cascading consolidation in the industry
• Optimus Technology acquires SmartHop Freight Platform, but the interesting thing is what they do with it (give it away for free?!?)…watch this space. 
• E.ON is buying up BP Pulse’s Dutch EV charging footprint.
• Ampol is buying Evie to integrate charging into their forecourt offer
• Hypercharge has closed on Refuel Charging

Longer form items

• I’ve already shared my skepticism of electric aircraft, so it’s worth sharing the view from the other side. Founder/CEO of Heart Aerospace went on a (very friendly) podcast with Y Combinator (15 minute listen)  
• Pony AI had their CFO do a podcast hit with Ride AI, and it’s the cleanest comms of an AV strategy i’ve ever seen/heard. Highly recommended. (1 hour listen)
• The Verge had their transportation editor on for a wide ranging, and at times funny, podcast on the state of the industry.