Best of LinkedIn: Future Mobility & Market Evolution CW 47/ 48

00:00:00: Brought to you by Thomas Allgeier and Franis, this edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on future mobility and market evolution in weeks forty-seven and forty-eight.

00:00:10: Franis supports enterprises with market and competitive intelligence, decoding disruptive technologies, customer needs, regulatory change, and competitive moves, so product teams and strategy leaders don't just react, but shape the future of mobility.

00:00:24: Welcome to the deep dive.

00:00:26: Today, we're bringing you a really distilled shot of intelligence from the mobility industry, looking exclusively at the strategic insights shared on LinkedIn during calendar weeks, forty seven and forty eight.

00:00:36: And

00:00:36: what really stands out in the source material is this this tension.

00:00:39: You have a mobility sector caught between two massive forces.

00:00:42: OK, what are they?

00:00:43: Well, on one side, you've got this incredibly rapid technological deployment.

00:00:47: I mean, autonomy is moving from these cautious city pilots into actual commercial corridors.

00:00:52: Right.

00:00:52: But on the other side, there's intense operational scrutiny.

00:00:55: Cities are starting to reframe basic things like parking and curbside access as really critical strategic assets.

00:01:01: So our mission today is to dive into the top trends that define that intersection where the tech hits the tarmac and meets regulatory reality.

00:01:11: Let's start with the high-octane part.

00:01:12: The global autonomous deployment race and public trust.

00:01:15: Absolutely.

00:01:16: The whole conversation is decisively shifted.

00:01:19: Ryan Leverett observed that the robotaxi race, it's not really about who builds the better sensor suite anymore.

00:01:25: It's

00:01:25: a deployment game now.

00:01:26: It's a pure deployment and rapid scaling game.

00:01:29: That's it.

00:01:30: And what's fascinating is that the scaling is happening globally.

00:01:33: While the US giants often focus on domestic expansion, we're seeing Chinese players just... aggressively filling what Liverd called a strategic gap.

00:01:42: Weirite is the perfect example of this.

00:01:45: Roger Juan-L.A.J.

00:01:46: noted their recent success in Switzerland, getting a driverless permit there.

00:01:49: That's a huge deal, a regulated European market.

00:01:52: A huge step.

00:01:53: And it gets bigger.

00:01:54: Ronald Maristani highlighted they're also authorized for operations in Saudi Arabia.

00:01:58: Which, as we know, is pouring money into future mobility.

00:02:01: Exactly.

00:02:02: So WeRide is now the only tech company with autonomous driving permits in eight different countries.

00:02:08: That global footprint, it's not just for bragging rights, it's a massive data advantage.

00:02:13: It is.

00:02:13: But the real game changer here is the economics of it all.

00:02:16: John Kuetzier provided this critical comparison of the leading players.

00:02:20: Right.

00:02:21: Baidu's Apollo Go is already doing a staggering two hundred fifty thousand rides a week.

00:02:26: I mean that kind of volume translates into data velocity that very few competitors can even touch.

00:02:32: And this is where the cost model becomes that, well that economic earthquake.

00:02:36: Baidu's R-key six vehicle has level four autonomy.

00:02:39: It's packed with twelve hundred TOPS of compute power.

00:02:43: And let's just pause on that for a second.

00:02:44: TOPS tear operations per second.

00:02:46: That's the raw measure of processing speed.

00:02:48: So, twelve hundred is, it's a massive amount of power.

00:02:50: It's what you need to run all the sensing and decision making in real time.

00:02:53: Exactly.

00:02:54: And Baidu delivers that level four performance in a vehicle that costs under thirty thousand dollars.

00:02:59: Okay, so contrast that with Waymo's vehicles.

00:03:01: which traditionally run well over a hundred thousand dollars.

00:03:04: so you see the future pricing pressure right there.

00:03:07: A seventy thousand dollar cost delta completely changes the fleet replacement cycle and the long-term viability of these networks.

00:03:14: Which

00:03:15: is exactly why U.S.

00:03:16: companies have to scale so aggressively.

00:03:18: Arturo Perez de Lucia Gonzalez pointed out Waymo is pushing hard into highway operations.

00:03:24: San Francisco Phoenix LA.

00:03:25: That highway expansion is crucial, isn't it?

00:03:27: It signals they're moving toward maximum utilization, trying to redefine their own cost models to compete.

00:03:34: But all of this scaling brings us right back to the most critical constraint.

00:03:37: Public

00:03:37: trust.

00:03:38: Public

00:03:38: trust.

00:03:39: Jackie Lavornia shared her experience in a waymo and just emphasized how paramount that feeling of trust is for mass adoption.

00:03:46: When the tech moves this fast, governance has to lead, not lag behind.

00:03:51: This accountability vacuum is a huge concern.

00:03:54: Dominique Shelton Leipzig argued that when there's a tragic accident, the failure isn't just an algorithm bug.

00:03:59: No, it's bigger than that.

00:04:00: It's the lack of rigorous testing, a lack of responsible data governance.

00:04:04: It's a leadership failure from the board level down.

00:04:07: That's a pretty serious indictment of corporate responsibility.

00:04:10: Yeah.

00:04:10: And that need for oversight.

00:04:13: It hits different cultural walls depending on where you are in the world, doesn't it?

00:04:16: It does.

00:04:17: Manuel Steger offered this fascinating comparison between German and American views.

00:04:23: And Uber driver observed that Waymo's have eighty percent fewer accidents than human drivers.

00:04:28: In the US, that's seen as huge progress.

00:04:31: But Steger suggests that, you know, the German conservative mindset tends to look at the residual risk.

00:04:36: The

00:04:36: remaining twenty percent of accidents.

00:04:38: Right.

00:04:39: That's seen as a fundamental blocker.

00:04:40: So if the US celebrates the eighty percent win and keeps deploying, while Germany stalls over the twenty percent risk, Doesn't that just grant American companies a massive, maybe permanent deployment and data advantage?

00:04:53: It certainly looks that way.

00:04:54: The speed of deployment is directly tied to a society's risk tolerance.

00:04:59: And that mindset clash is really defining the global pace of this rollout.

00:05:02: You know, that clash between high-tech deployment and the need for governance is a perfect segue.

00:05:07: It seems like whether we're talking about a complex robot taxi or a simple e-scooter, the challenge is the same.

00:05:13: A failure to govern shared public space effectively.

00:05:16: Exactly.

00:05:17: Which brings us to urban governance, planning, and micromobility trade-offs.

00:05:21: Yeah.

00:05:22: Cities are trying so hard to meet these sustainable mobility goals, but they're just constantly being derailed by the chaos on the street.

00:05:29: The micromobility issue is just so messy.

00:05:32: And Prague is a textbook case study.

00:05:34: Lars Christian Grutum Olsen detailed how shared e-scooters were banned there.

00:05:39: Overwhelming public support rate.

00:05:40: Overwhelming,

00:05:41: eighty-two percent.

00:05:42: But the reason wasn't really safety.

00:05:44: They cited forty-seven scooter injuries versus two from bikes.

00:05:47: The real problem was the parking clutter.

00:05:49: The visual nuisance.

00:05:50: Sidewalks, tram stops.

00:05:52: It was an operational mess.

00:05:54: It's a classic negative externality.

00:05:56: The operators, they have to collaborate on self-regulation.

00:05:58: on strict parking fines.

00:06:00: Because if the city has to bear the cost of enforcement, the politically popular answer is always just to ban them.

00:06:07: But a ban is often misguided.

00:06:09: Bram says pointed this out in Brussels.

00:06:11: Scooters are GPS tracked.

00:06:12: They're highly traceable.

00:06:13: So banning them to curb crime is pretty ineffective.

00:06:16: Right.

00:06:16: What it does do is punish people who rely on them because they don't have a car or a license.

00:06:21: And that reliance just proves how resilient micro mobility is as a key part of the urban backbone.

00:06:27: Yes, an attaché confirmed that during transit strikes in Brussels, voice saw ridership surge by up to a hundred and twenty percent.

00:06:35: Wow.

00:06:36: And Frederick Helm also noted that nearly half of all void riders use them to connect with public transport to fill those desert zones between the major transit stops.

00:06:45: That dependency just highlights the systemic failure of our traditional urban planning models.

00:06:50: Robert, Joseph Martin brought up this critical flaw in cities like Copenhagen.

00:06:54: The traffic demand models.

00:06:55: They're wildly outdated.

00:06:57: They still use these fixed trip rates, like assuming three point one car trips per apartment based on these old national car heavy averages.

00:07:05: So they end up drastically overengineering the infrastructure for cars, even in new car light developments.

00:07:11: They're forced to build parking and roads for the that doesn't even exist in a modern neighborhood.

00:07:26: And what's so fascinating about that is how it succeeds.

00:07:29: They maximize the road space by intelligently integrating dedicated bus lanes, car lanes, and crucially two wide protected bike lanes.

00:07:39: So by giving transit and cycling the priority, you

00:07:41: dramatically improve throughput for the majority of commuters.

00:07:45: And that leads directly to reduced emissions and less congestion for the few cars left.

00:07:50: And Dania Alatami reminded us that true smart city design has to go beyond just efficiency.

00:07:56: It has to be about livability.

00:07:58: She suggests integrating granular accessibility data for wheelchair users, older adults, into digital twins.

00:08:04: So

00:08:04: you're moving urban planning from just, you know, ticking a compliance box to something that's genuinely human-centered.

00:08:10: That focus on urban design and optimizing resources, it leads us directly into our next theme, strategic infrastructure, investment, and regional acceleration.

00:08:18: Sanatelekinan articulated this really crucial shift.

00:08:22: that parking is no longer just a real estate problem.

00:08:24: Exactly.

00:08:25: It's evolving into critical urban mobility infrastructure, essential for things like EV charging and curbside management.

00:08:31: So AI is at the center of that evolution.

00:08:34: Stephen Bogoff highlighted how AI-powered systems can track parking availability in real time.

00:08:39: Which allows for dynamic pricing.

00:08:41: Dynamic pricing, and critically, it reduces driver search times by up to thirty percent.

00:08:47: And that reduction in just cruising for parking.

00:08:50: That's a huge congestion reliever in crowded cities.

00:08:53: So if the infrastructure is getting smarter, where's the capital flowing?

00:08:56: Kirsten Heinke and Timo Muller noted that investors are now demanding precision.

00:09:00: The speculation is over.

00:09:02: Exactly.

00:09:02: We're seeing a consolidation trend.

00:09:04: In autonomous tech, the deals are getting fewer, but much, much larger.

00:09:08: They're driven by the huge capital needs for advanced AI.

00:09:11: and the scarcity of things like semiconductors.

00:09:14: So investors are backing the clear winners who can build out whole ecosystems.

00:09:18: And in electrification, that consolidation is focused on large scale ecosystem builds, integrated value chains, not smaller, fragmented bets.

00:09:27: Investors want reliable scale.

00:09:29: Geographically, we have to look at where that capital is flowing fastest.

00:09:33: Johann C. Bordais emphasized the blistering pace of acceleration in the Middle

00:09:37: East, particularly Saudi Arabia.

00:09:38: The growth is driven by massive state investments in urban air mobility, advanced tech, all to support a projected one hundred and fifty million visitors by twenty thirty.

00:09:48: That is a staggering target.

00:09:50: And Hashim al-Fatayerji confirmed that they aren't just planning this future, they're building it now.

00:09:56: They're using the cost sandbox for testing everything from hydrogen buses to drones.

00:10:00: With an aggressive target of thirty percent EVs by twenty thirty.

00:10:04: It's a really comprehensive accelerated strategy.

00:10:07: But acceleration isn't just limited to the big petro states.

00:10:10: We're also seeing vital innovation in emerging markets.

00:10:13: Alexandria Lannick detailed Wahoo mobility in Ghana, for instance.

00:10:17: And

00:10:17: the key there is the locally manufactured part, right?

00:10:19: That's the key.

00:10:20: These are electric bikes designed specifically for African road conditions, not just adapted imports.

00:10:25: And they're tapping into a projected four point two billion dollar African EV market by twenty thirty by using appropriate technology.

00:10:32: That kind of local relevance is absolutely crucial for real scalable adoption.

00:10:38: And that transitions us perfectly into our final theme, sustainable transport and the political pathway.

00:10:44: Yeah, Roberta Boscolo's post on World Sustainable Transport Day was a pretty sobering reminder.

00:10:50: Transport is still the largest source of global carbon emissions.

00:10:53: Which means every single journey is fundamentally a climate choice.

00:10:58: And that choice has a measurable impact.

00:11:00: The data shows that choosing shared mobility, public transport or carpooling can save up to two point two tons of curro per person per year.

00:11:09: We're also seeing some serious infrastructure commitments in Europe to help people make those better choices.

00:11:14: Michael Brecht highlighted the high-speed rail expansion.

00:11:16: Right, the Munich-Berlin connection and the new Hamburg-Kopenhagen route.

00:11:20: They're practical solutions that just efficiently reduce our reliance on carbon-heavy short-haul flights.

00:11:25: But inside the city, the efficiency problem is much more.

00:11:29: Well, pedestrian.

00:11:30: Tamer ALZUBI pointed out the silent prices.

00:11:33: Seventy-five to eighty percent of vehicles in congestion are carrying just one person.

00:11:37: One person.

00:11:38: The solution there isn't more roads.

00:11:40: No, it's better utilization.

00:11:42: He suggests pushing the fixed-route carpooling model, like Blobacar in Spain, to aggregate passengers along set routes.

00:11:49: You reduce single occupancy without adding any more cars.

00:11:52: And to make those choices work, integration is everything.

00:11:56: Jeffrey Mathies shared a great insight from the Polis Conference.

00:11:59: A massive, sixty-six percent of shared bike users are willing to pay more for seamless integration with public transport.

00:12:06: It confirms they're not competitors.

00:12:07: Not at all.

00:12:08: As he said, they are the perfect marriage.

00:12:12: So we've really covered a lot of ground and industry balancing this high stakes global AV race driven by tech and cost competition with the fundamental need to redefine urban space through all these micro decisions on parking, cycling and transit.

00:12:26: And that operational balance brings us to the final and maybe most crucial point, the challenge of political momentum.

00:12:32: Russell King summarized the core issue perfectly.

00:12:35: We have the technical knowledge for people oriented transport.

00:12:38: We know bike lanes work.

00:12:39: We know better buses work.

00:12:41: But we lack the effect of political strategy to implement them.

00:12:44: That's a profound thought, isn't it?

00:12:45: We know the solutions work.

00:12:47: Where do mobility leaders even start to apply pressure?

00:12:50: at the national level or the neighborhood level?

00:12:53: King suggests the path forward is to focus on creating momentum through small, intensely appealing local wins.

00:12:59: So think school streets.

00:13:01: Neighborhood bike lane improvements.

00:13:03: Small public realm upgrades.

00:13:05: These visible local successes they accumulate.

00:13:08: They build public support and eventually force the larger systemic change that the mobility industry so desperately needs.

00:13:15: That's a powerful call to action for every leader listening.

00:13:19: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:13:22: Also check out our other editions on electrification and battery technology, next-gen vehicle intelligence, and commercial fleet insights.

00:13:30: Thank you for joining this deep dive, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one.