Best of LinkedIn: Future Mobility & Market Evolution CW 23/ 24

00:00:00: brought to you by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus.

00:00:02: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on future mobility in market evolution, in weeks twenty three and twenty four.

00:00:07: Frenness supports tier one automotive suppliers with early stage market validation for their R&D efforts By combining secondary research direct ODM expert interviews And facilitated customer meetings.

00:00:20: You can find more info In the description.

00:00:23: Honestly The insights we're digging into today are just.

00:00:26: They're a massive reality check.

00:00:27: Yeah,

00:00:27: totally welcome to the deep dive.

00:00:29: everyone.

00:00:30: I'm your host and today we're unpacking The top future mobility trends that professionals have been you know buzzing about across linkedin right

00:00:37: specifically pulling from calendar weeks And I'm here to help analyze all these expert takes, break down the tech.

00:00:44: All that good stuff.

00:00:45: Exactly and our mission today is really look at a big shift happening in industry because we're kind of stepping out of that pristine sci-fi vision.

00:00:53: smart cities right?

00:00:54: Oh absolutely!

00:00:54: The hype cycle well it's officially broken but people are actually building systems.

00:00:59: they aren't talking about flashy future scenarios anymore

00:01:02: Right, it's all about deployment.

00:01:03: readiness now.

00:01:04: Exactly!

00:01:04: Readiness, uh... infrastructure constraints, affordability and just the sheer friction of the real world.

00:01:11: that is an overarching thing

00:01:12: Which was a perfect segue because nowhere is that friction more obvious right now than in autonomous mobility.

00:01:18: Let us start there.

00:01:19: Yeah The robotaxi space

00:01:20: Because we are crossing massive threshold.

00:01:23: I saw a post from Marcus Beret And he pointed out this staggering number paid driverless rides a week.

00:01:33: Half-a million paid rides, I mean.

00:01:36: just let that sink in for second.

00:01:37: we are so far past the era of you know those cute little pilot programs with safety drivers hovering over the wheel

00:01:43: right.

00:01:44: this is a functioning scaled commercial service now

00:01:47: and it's not isolated to just one or two tech hubs anymore.

00:01:50: no totally like Paul Bennett highlighted that Uber is actually opening signups.

00:01:57: That's a complex environment.

00:01:58: It is!

00:01:59: And on top of that, UgrinJazz noted that Saudi Arabia is deploying level four NVIDIA-powered fleets via company called Humane?

00:02:07: Let us clarify what this actually means for you as passenger though because Level Four has really critical distinction here.

00:02:12: Right it not full autonomy everywhere right

00:02:14: Exactly the car is driving itself like zero human intervention but only within specific digitally mapped area.

00:02:23: You can't just spontaneously decide to drive you off-road into the desert.

00:02:28: Got it,

00:02:29: but what Saudi Arabia is doing is fascinating.

00:02:30: they aren't just buying cars They're using these Nvidia fleets to build a sovereign AI infrastructure.

00:02:37: So the mobility part is really?

00:02:38: Just The physical execution of a much larger national tech strategy.

00:02:43: that is wild.

00:02:44: But I want to pause on this idea of scaling for a second.

00:02:47: Yeah, because it makes it sound like the tech is just totally solved.

00:02:50: right which isn't

00:02:51: exactly.

00:02:52: when i read sherry hendrickson's recent post about wemo It paints A very different picture.

00:02:57: yeah The reality Is much messier than the press releases.

00:03:00: Like To admit.

00:03:01: Henderson Brought Up a really important Reality Check Regarding Waymos new Vehicle the Ojai

00:03:05: Right, and the hardware on the OJ is incredible.

00:03:08: I mean they built it from the ground up just to be a robotaxi.

00:03:12: flat floors low step in height No

00:03:14: steering wheel taking up space.

00:03:16: Yeah

00:03:16: no steering wheel.

00:03:17: It's fully optimized for the passenger But there is a huge catch.

00:03:21: The software?

00:03:22: Exactly, the hardware's leaping forward but the software still getting completely tripped up by everyday chaos.

00:03:28: like Hendrickson points out Waymo recently had to shut down service in six US cities Because

00:03:34: of flooding issues.

00:03:35: right

00:03:36: Yeah!

00:03:36: Flooding Issues.

00:03:37: and they also have to suspend highway driving because construction zones.

00:03:41: Well think about it from human perspective.

00:03:43: If you're a human driver You know exactly how handle puddle Right.

00:03:47: Look at it Gauge the depth Watch the car in front of you and just drive

00:03:51: through it.

00:03:51: Right, that's intuitive!

00:03:52: But to an autonomous vehicle's cameras or its lidar.

00:03:56: a big puddle might look like a solid black hole on the road... Or y'know.. A mirror reflecting the sky.

00:04:02: The software lacks contextual awareness to say oh thats water.

00:04:06: So hardware innovation is outpacing the softwares.

00:04:09: real world reliability.

00:04:12: Humans understand context.

00:04:14: Machines see conflicting data points

00:04:16: Which brings up a massive question about regulation.

00:04:19: Right now, it feels like these companies are just asking for a blank check to deploy vehicles everywhere.

00:04:26: Yeah and Brian Reimer had a fantastic analysis on this.

00:04:28: He used really great analogy The

00:04:30: graduated driver's license.

00:04:32: Yes You know how you get your drivers' licenses as a teenager?

00:04:35: You don't just get a piece of paper that lets you drive anywhere, anytime.

00:04:43: Right!

00:04:59: You start under clearly defined conditions like clear weather, low-speed roads.

00:05:04: you only expand when the data actually proves it's safe

00:05:07: and if safety risks pop up like floodwaters regulators can just throttle the permits back without a massive legal fight right

00:05:15: which feeds directly into the safety debate we're seeing.

00:05:18: Lucas Neckerman offered very sharp critique of Tesla full self driving marketing.

00:05:23: oh

00:05:23: man yeah he did not hold back.

00:05:25: no he didn't.

00:05:26: He called out this extreme reliance on fine print disclaimers.

00:05:30: You can't market a system as full self-driving while hiding behind legal text that says the human has to stay fully attentive.

00:05:37: Yeah, he argued that it's a dangerously reactive approach.

00:05:40: It basically turns pedestrians and passengers into beta testers.

00:05:44: And Ricky walk took this step further.

00:05:46: you looked at the actual mathematics of how these vehicles learn right now?

00:05:53: put the fleets out there, find errors and send in over-the-air patch.

00:05:56: But Kuwak argues that brute forcing safety like this is mathematically unsustainable.

00:06:01: The real world has an infinite number of weird events What data scientists call...The Long Tail.

00:06:07: So

00:06:07: you can't possibly code an update for every bizarre scenario.

00:06:11: Exactly You're treating safety Like a posted note software patch.

00:06:16: So K-Walk says the solution isn't making the car smarter.

00:06:20: It's shifting the intelligence to the road itself.

00:06:23: Okay, using edge nodes right?

00:06:25: Let's unpack that.

00:06:26: what exactly is an Edge node?

00:06:28: think of a highly intelligent street lamp at A really complex intersection.

00:06:32: it has its own sensors Its own processing power.

00:06:34: Right.

00:06:35: instead of every single autonomous car rolling up and trying to independently scan The chaos And guess what pedestrians are doing the Street lamp sees the whole picture.

00:06:44: Oh, wow.

00:06:44: Yeah it processes the chaos and streams a real-time ground truth map directly to the approaching cars.

00:06:51: So instead of giving the car better eyes The road itself just sends a message To the car a mile in advance saying hey right lane is flooded merge left now.

00:06:59: That's the exact mechanism.

00:07:01: You resolve the chaos before the vehicle even arrives at a problem.

00:07:04: that makes so much sense.

00:07:05: but uh, Before we move off autonomous vehicles We have to talk about steve greenfields warning because this totally changed how i view The tech.

00:07:13: will the zombie miles yes?

00:07:15: We spent all this time worrying about shared robo taxis like uber But greenfield points out the real nightmare for cities might be personally owned.

00:07:23: avies.

00:07:24: It's a terrifying thought for traffic planners.

00:07:27: Imagine you own a self-driving car.

00:07:29: You commute to the city center, but parking is like fifty bucks

00:07:33: right.

00:07:34: so you just tell your empty car To drive all the way back to your suburban driveway to park for free and then come pick.

00:07:40: You up at five p.m.

00:07:41: So for every one commute?

00:07:43: Your car Is making four trips two of them completely empty.

00:07:46: you'd

00:07:46: have a flood Of zero passenger cars Just gridlocking our streets.

00:07:50: it reshapes urban congestion entirely And definitely not for The better

00:07:55: which actually brings us perfectly to the other side of the mobility equation.

00:07:59: If AVs need smarter infrastructure, what happens when we apply that smart thinking to the public transit systems?

00:08:18: Historically, companies pitched them to cities as a way.

00:08:21: save money on driver wages.

00:08:23: Right but the tech costs millions!

00:08:25: Exactly how does saving one hourly wage balance out a multi-million dollar sensor suite?

00:08:30: It doesn't.

00:08:31: But Gabor points that Europe is currently short.

00:08:34: two hundred seventy five thousand bus drivers.

00:08:36: You literally cannot fire a driver you couldn't hire in first place.

00:08:40: So The missing driver doesn't represent a saved salary.

00:08:43: it represents completely cancelled bus route

00:08:45: Exactly.

00:08:47: The driver isn't a line item cost, the driver is the service.

00:08:50: So in business case for an autonomous bus it's actually about service recovery.

00:08:54: It's only way to keep critical public transit running when human staffing is impossible.

00:08:59: That completely reframes the value of the tech.

00:09:02: But you know, it's fascinating sometimes.

00:09:03: fixing urban mobility doesn't require AI or robotics at all.

00:09:07: right behavioral design

00:09:08: yes low-cost interventions vastly outperforming expensive infrastructure like that red light in Mumbai we were talking about before he started recording Yon Berno posted about this.

00:09:18: oh The punishing signal.

00:09:20: I love his example.

00:09:21: So Mumbai had a massive noise pollution crisis from drivers honking your headlights.

00:09:26: fines just weren't working.

00:09:28: So how did they fix it?

00:09:29: mechanically, I mean?

00:09:30: They installed simple decibel meters on the traffic light poles wired directly into the timer.

00:09:35: If the collective honking exceeded eighty-five decibels The red light timer automatically reset back to ninety seconds.

00:09:42: Honk more Wait More.

00:09:44: That is brilliant behavioral conditioning.

00:09:46: It instantly solved the crisis.

00:09:48: No police no fines Bernal pointed out Don't just tell people to change their behavior.

00:09:54: Make the system design the

00:09:55: consequences.".

00:09:56: And we saw another zero-cost example of this from Mohamed Sharad in Amman, he pointed out you don't always need to pour asphalt to fix a traffic jam.

00:10:03: Right

00:10:03: they adjusted the schedule.

00:10:05: Yeah!

00:10:05: They staggered start times public sectors and schools by just thirty minutes.

00:10:09: It's like water flowing through pipe If everyone tries push thru at eight am The pipe grid locks.

00:10:15: Sherot noted that shifting just a fraction of the volume to eight thirty AM flattened peak traffic by fifteen percent.

00:10:22: Costs absolutely nothing!

00:10:24: And Ha Samro shared physical intervention from South Korea, similar...

00:10:28: The walking lanes?

00:10:29: Yeah

00:10:30: they're testing separate walking lanes on sidewalk for fast and slow pedestrians.

00:10:34: Commuters in a rush take one lane tourists takes another.

00:10:38: it just acknowledges how human beings actually move.

00:10:42: But you know when city does need spend money.

00:10:45: Guillermo Kempelmore noted something revealing about digital infrastructure.

00:10:50: In the exact same week, both New York City and Los Angeles launched Unified Transit apps...

00:10:55: This is a massive shift!

00:10:57: For years you had to have like one app for The Subway in totally different ones to rent a city bike Right

00:11:02: but NYC's new Go App and LA Metro's app unify all those modes into one interface.

00:11:08: Kempemore says this proves integrated digital mobility

00:11:14: Because you can't have true multimodal transport-like taking a train and then grabbing an e-scooter if the user has to juggle six

00:11:21: apps.

00:11:22: Exactly!

00:11:22: The digital infrastructure is the prerequisite for physical movement,

00:11:26: which leads perfectly into the final piece of the urban puzzle—you get off the subway how do you get your front door?

00:11:33: Let's zoom in on micromobility, especially the insights out of the Micromobilty Europe.

00:11:39: twenty-twenty six event in Berlin because this sector has finally moved past its wild west

00:11:43: phase.

00:11:44: It really has.

00:11:45: Martin Lutronk observed at the event that the sector is shifting into serious professionalization but getting there required a total reversal of strategy.

00:11:53: Yeah,

00:11:54: General Jeff pointed it up The old playbook was just flood the streets dump thousands of scooters everywhere and figure out profits later.

00:12:01: The blitz scaling era is dead.

00:12:04: Jethyn notes that thriving operators like Voy and Dot are hitting profitability now because they're ruthlessly pruning their unprofitable markets,

00:12:11: focusing entirely on high yield dense corridors.

00:12:14: Exactly!

00:12:15: And Manuel Herzog backed this up with data from Zurich.

00:12:18: Dot's new scooter fleet there is hitting an unprecedented ninety-six percent daily availability.

00:12:24: Ninety six percent?

00:12:25: How do you physically achieve

00:12:27: Efficient, swappable batteries.

00:12:29: Their logistics teams are doing fewer battery swaps.

00:12:32: keeping vehicles on the streets longer plus predictive data tells them exactly which street corners have the highest demand.

00:12:39: But there is a massive contradiction here.

00:12:41: just as the economics are working The policy risk Is peaking?

00:12:45: The regulatory backlash?

00:12:46: Yeah Praeben.

00:12:48: Joel Jones expressed deep frustration over Brussels decision to outright ban shared e-scooters starting in twenty twenty seven.

00:12:55: And he pointed out the inconsistency, right?

00:12:58: City councils cite safety but private cars have way higher accident rates and don't face existential bans.

00:13:05: Exactly!

00:13:06: And Hank Swartow highlighted a similarly disappointing move in Barcelona.

00:13:10: They're banning shared e-bikes from twenty twenty seven.

00:13:12: they expect The public bike system to absorb the demand But it just doesn't have the capacity.

00:13:17: these bands set a dangerous precedent.

00:13:19: But if you look closely, the real bottleneck for growth isn't vehicles themselves.

00:13:24: Charlie Wilson pointed out it's lack of infrastructure.

00:13:26: Nearly half riders say they would use micromobility more when streets were safer.

00:13:31: An infrastructure fixes regulatory headaches too!

00:13:34: If regulators hate sidewalk clutter...you need a physical solution.

00:13:38: Thomas Broughton highlighted brilliant deployment in London with Operator Barrel

00:13:43: The operator agnostic parking structures.

00:13:45: This is how to build trust.

00:13:47: Instead of relying on GPS geofencing, which bounces around off tall buildings these physical racks use hard verification.

00:13:56: Right there's a physical docking pin.

00:13:57: it interfaces directly with the scooter and until that pin clicks into place?

00:14:01: The meter is still running on your credit card.

00:14:03: Wow so you literally cannot end your ride until its properly slotted in the rack.

00:14:08: That instantly solves the abandoned scooter problem.

00:14:10: And because its operator agnostic any company vehicle can It's public infrastructure for private operators.

00:14:16: Which brings up a question I wanted to ask you, hearing all this pruning markets standardized docs high availability does This mean micro mobility is finally becoming a boring utility like A water or power company?

00:14:29: and Is that the ultimate goal?

00:14:31: Oh absolutely.

00:14:32: when his service becomes a boring reliable Utility it means he has successfully integrated into daily life.

00:14:39: its no longer a novelty.

00:14:41: Its just how You get To work.

00:14:43: That predictability is what investors and cities need.

00:14:46: But I'm glad the industry still has its quirks.

00:14:48: Johan Hagosun-Halesby shared his excitement from Berlin over the new ALSO eBike, it had a drive by wire design

00:14:56: A fascinating mechanical shift.

00:14:57: Drive By Wire means that pedals aren't connected to rear wheel with chain.

00:15:01: Wait so how does pedaling move bike?

00:15:03: When you pedal your just turning generator which creates electricity?

00:15:07: That electricity sent via wires To motor in the wheel Hogas and Hells being noted, it makes acceleration incredibly smooth.

00:15:14: And no greasy chain.

00:15:15: so its super modular.

00:15:17: you could swap the seat for a cargo rack in seconds

00:15:19: Exactly!

00:15:20: It's becoming true car replacement for cities.

00:15:22: Speaking of city life Brandon Shoe shared a hilarious well unfortunate anecdote from London.

00:15:28: Two guys on silent battery powered e-bike rode up behind him and snatched his phone right out of his hands.

00:15:34: A very modern electrified crime

00:15:36: Right, but Brandon jokingly blamed it on rival insurance brokers.

00:15:40: He spun this whole conspiracy theory on LinkedIn that competitors were trying to sabotage his firm.

00:15:45: You have to appreciate a mobility professional finding the dark humor in experiencing a micro-mobility crime first hand.

00:15:52: Okay

00:15:52: as we pull all these threads together from puddles confusing robo taxes To operator agnostic scooter docks What is the big takeaway you want the listener to walk away with?

00:16:03: I want to leave you with a final thought that connects our first theme of autonomy, with the much larger geopolitical reality.

00:16:10: Timothy Papandreou raised a vital question about technological sovereignty.

00:16:15: as Europe and Middle East aggressively roll out autonomous networks like the fleets in Switzerland Munich Saudi Arabia They're almost entirely relying on foreign AI.

00:16:24: Right, licensing tech from US companies like Waymo or Chinese companies like Baidu.

00:16:29: So the physical cars are driving on European and Middle Eastern streets but The digital brain belongs to a foreign superpower Papandreou asks.

00:16:37: Does Relying On Foreign Tech Stacks To Power Fundamental Public Infrastructure Raise Deep Sondern Risks?

00:16:43: I mean if the AI driver becomes the operating system of future mobility Whoever owns it dictates the pricing and data of the global market.

00:16:52: Exactly, just like Apple and Google dictated the smartphone era The biggest point of friction in the coming decade might not be physical infrastructure at all.

00:17:01: It may decide who actually owns code that moves our cities.

00:17:06: That is a massive question for the industry to figure out.

00:17:09: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks!

00:17:12: Also check our other editions on electrification and battery technology next-gen vehicle intelligence and commercial fleet insights.

00:17:19: Yeah thank you joining us as we sort it through noise today To find what really matters.

00:17:23: Definitely keep an eye out of the next deep dive And don't forget to subscribe.