Best of LinkedIn: Future Mobility & Market Evolution CW 17/ 18

00:00:00: Brought to you by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, this edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on future mobility in market evolution in weeks seventeen-and-eighteen.

00:00:08: Frenness supports tier one automotive suppliers with early stage market validation for their R&D efforts by combining secondary research direct OAM expert interviews And facilitated customer meetings.

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

00:00:22: So welcome to The Deep Dive everyone.

00:00:24: Yeah

00:00:24: thanks For joining us.

00:00:25: We're jumping straight into some of those critical future mobility trends surfacing across professional networks right now.

00:00:32: We really are, and if there's one overarching through line in the curated insights you're about to hear today is that the entire mobility industry is transitioning.

00:00:41: Right,

00:00:41: transitioning away from that venture capital fuels sci-fi era... Exactly!

00:00:46: And moving aggressively into the era of hard execution

00:00:49: the era of flying car press releases and, you know burning cash just to grab market share.

00:00:54: that's basically over.

00:00:55: Yeah The directors have finally yelled cut on the flashy visions And now we are staring at the unglamorous highly detailed blueprints...the

00:01:03: boring stuff!

00:01:03: ...The boring but necessary stuff Unit economics municipal friction operational logistics?

00:01:11: The overarching story from our sources this week is That the math Is Finally Actually Working.

00:01:17: It is, and the math's changing mostly because business models have had to mature just to survive.

00:01:23: To see exactly how that maturity is playing out.

00:01:26: We should probably start by looking at Arthur Bernan's recent breakdown of Dott's financial fundamental.

00:01:31: Oh this was fascinating

00:01:32: Because for years The narrative around shared scooters in e-bikes Was a bonfire of capital.

00:01:37: Yeah literally setting money on fire.

00:01:40: Operators would just drop thousands of vehicles onto city sidewalks and pray that profitability would magically materialize down the road.

00:01:47: Somehow, somehow but Vernon highlights a monumental shift here.

00:01:51: dot Just posted a seven million euro adjusted EBITDA profit

00:01:56: which is huge

00:01:57: on a hundred seventy three million euros in revenue.

00:01:59: I mean i'm looking at those numbers And pulling off for profit at a scale.

00:02:03: nearly two hundred million in Revenue Is a serious milestone?

00:02:06: For shared micro mobility

00:02:07: it really.

00:02:08: But I'm stuck on one specific data point that Vernon breaks down regarding their combined fleet of uh, two hundred and fifty thousand vehicles.

00:02:17: Yeah the utilization rate right.

00:02:19: when you run The math on the active deployed fleet versus the revenue it averages out to about One point three rides per vehicle per day.

00:02:28: yeah I have to push back here because one point three rides a day means that for roughly twenty-three hours out of the day, that capital asset is just sitting on a sidewalk doing absolutely nothing.

00:02:38: Just

00:02:38: gathering dust?

00:02:39: Exactly!

00:02:40: How does any company survive let alone profit on utilization rates at low?

00:02:46: Well it forces a complete mental reset in how we evaluate industry.

00:02:50: You know, we still look at shared mobility like a taxi service.

00:02:53: Where the goal is to constantly keep the vehicle moving with a paying passenger in the back?

00:02:57: Exactly but Vernon's analysis shows that this is no longer a high margin game driven by premium paride pricing.

00:03:04: Okay It has entirely logistics and operational efficiency play.

00:03:08: The cost isn't the scooter sitting idle

00:03:10: Right because the scooters are sunk

00:03:11: costs?

00:03:12: Yes The real cost is the human labor required to drive a van to that scooter, swap its battery fix it's brakes or you know manually rebalance into a busier street.

00:03:23: Oh I see.

00:03:23: so if you engineer swappable batteries build hyper efficient routing software for your maintenance crews and make vehicles durable enough the overhead crashes.

00:03:34: It completely crashes, you don't need five rides a day if your operational cost per vehicle is just pennies!

00:03:39: Right.

00:03:40: and actually Jonas Bienek posted an update that perfectly complements this shift in unit economics.

00:03:46: Oh The Walt partnership?

00:03:47: Yes

00:03:48: he highlighted Dott's recent partnership with Walt plus offering those delivery subscription members thirty free minutes of e-scooter or e-bike rides a month across multiple European markets.

00:03:59: Wow it's essentially the gym membership model applied to mobility.

00:04:02: And that's brilliant because by tying mobility to an existing subscription platform, operators are artificially engineering baseline demand.

00:04:10: Yeah you sacrifice the high average revenue of a single impulsive ride

00:04:14: but you gain retention predictability and a massive influx user data exactly

00:04:20: when You know precisely where?

00:04:22: When your subscribers Are going to ride you can optimize Your street level logistics even further

00:04:27: which pushes those maintenance costs down To The absolute floor.

00:04:31: But driving those operations costs down relies heavily on the physical vehicles actually surviving the streets, which

00:04:36: used to be a big problem.

00:04:37: A huge problem.

00:04:38: for a long time The public perception of micromobility was pure chaos people tripping over scooters Riders getting into accidents constantly

00:04:46: right.

00:04:47: it was kind of a mess.

00:04:48: However the safety data coming out now is incredibly counterintuitive.

00:04:52: Mark Nathan and Lars Christian Grudemulsen Shade insights from the micro mobility for Europe.

00:04:57: twenty-twenty five safety data.

00:04:59: And what did that show?

00:05:00: Well, shared e-bike trips jumped an astonishing seventy two point three percent.

00:05:05: That's

00:05:05: massive growth!

00:05:06: Massive.

00:05:07: yet simultaneously the injury risk per million trips fell by eighteen point four percent.

00:05:13: that is counterintuitive.

00:05:14: yeah I mean The immediate assumption Is that flooding a city with more of a novel vehicle type would cause accidents to spike just

00:05:21: because there are more things To hit right?

00:05:23: Yeah simply Because more riders Are navigating complex traffic.

00:05:26: hmm But Grotem Olsen introduces this safety and numbers effect, which is a well-documented phenomenon in transport research.

00:05:35: How does that work?

00:05:35: In practice

00:05:36: it's basically a multi layered adaptation.

00:05:38: first the riders themselves log more miles transitioning from you know wobbly tourists to confident daily commuters.

00:05:46: they get better at writing

00:05:48: exactly yeah.

00:05:49: And second The sheer volume of writers forces municipal governments To react by deploying dedicated infrastructure like protected lanes.

00:05:57: And perhaps most importantly, the drivers of two-ton steel cars are forced to adapt too.

00:06:02: Yes It's like walking into a crowded room versus walking down an empty hallway.

00:06:06: The sheer presence of a crowd forces everyone to slow down make eye contact and change their behavior.

00:06:11: That's great analogy.

00:06:13: But we can't pretend this safety improvement is purely organic either.

00:06:16: it's heavily enforced by cities.

00:06:18: Right.

00:06:18: Bimanwagi had brilliant observation about the situation in Paris which was often completely misunderstood.

00:06:25: Oh, Paris is a great example.

00:06:27: Many people look at Paris and confidently declare that micro-mobility failed there because the city instituted a ban.

00:06:33: Right!

00:06:33: You see those headlines all of time—Paris bans scooters.

00:06:36: But Wagde clarifies that Paris didn't actually ban micro mobility at all.

00:06:41: They just rejected one specific chaotic operating model The permissionless free floating scooter.

00:06:48: It

00:06:48: replaced it with what?

00:06:49: They deliberately chose a highly regulated, tightly controlled shared e-bike model instead.

00:06:55: They restricted the market to just a few handpicked operators.

00:06:59: Yeah heavily enforced parking rules and demanded rigorous safety standards.

00:07:04: So the philosophy of entire industry has shifted?

00:07:07: The early days were defined by asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

00:07:11: you know Just dropping hardware everywhere Move

00:07:13: fast and break things Exactly.

00:07:15: But WAGD frames the future as negotiated integration.

00:07:20: Cities and operators are now actively collaborating to build systems that earn public trust, rather than just dumping hardware on the

00:07:26: pavement.".

00:07:27: Well if that negotiated integration is successfully moving millions of commuters it naturally begs question whether this highly evolved heavily regulated micro-mobility framework can solve something else.

00:07:42: Like what?

00:07:42: The absolute nightmare of commercial city logistics, moving goods instead of people.

00:07:48: and that brings us to an absolutely hardware breakthrough shared by Daniel Alyson Fett regarding a company called Machi.

00:07:57: they have engineered chain free ride-by wire commercial

00:08:04: eBike.

00:08:05: That represents fundamental engineering paradigm shift.

00:08:08: We are talking about severing the physical mechanical connection between the rider's legs and the rear wheel.

00:08:13: Let us actually unpack how this works because it is fascinating!

00:08:15: On a traditional bicycle, the pedals turn a crank which pulls a greasy metal chain that turns a cassette of gears... ...which turns the wheel....

00:08:22: Right.. The standard set up

00:08:23: And the chain is ultimate single point failure.

00:08:26: It snaps, it rusts, slips off the gear

00:08:28: Always when you're late too.

00:08:29: Exactly So.

00:08:30: Machi removed the chain entirely.

00:08:32: They remove the mechanical gears.

00:08:34: they even removed the pneumatic tires That constantly go flat.

00:08:37: Wait, what?

00:08:38: So how does it move

00:08:39: instead when you pedal this bike.

00:08:41: You are just turning a generator.

00:08:43: that Generator sends electricity through wires to a digital hub motor in the rear wheel.

00:08:49: That is wild

00:08:50: and software dynamically adjusts The resistance on the pedals.

00:08:54: so your brain still feels like you Are riding a mechanical bike.

00:08:58: By eliminating the chain, derailleur and air-filled tires you are systematically removing physical failure points that plague commercial fleets.

00:09:08: Olise & Fett notes this system achieves over ninety percent uptime.

00:09:12: If you manage a fleet of delivery riders or field service technicians your total cost for ownership just

00:09:18: plummets.

00:09:19: Because you aren't constantly paying mechanics to patch tubes or replace snap chains.

00:09:23: The vehicle stays on road generating revenue

00:09:26: And we are seeing major logistical players internalize this exact math at a massive scale right now.

00:09:33: Martin Anderson posted about Amazon opening its fourteenth German micro-mobility hub, This one located in Berlin.

00:09:40: Fourteenth?

00:09:40: Wow!

00:09:41: Yeah and from this new location alone they plan to deliver over two million packages a year using electric cargo bikes.

00:09:49: I mean a company like amazon operates purely on unit economics and efficiency.

00:09:53: They do not scale a program to fourteen hubs across the country just for good public relations.

00:09:59: Two million packages delivered via cargo bike means that in dense, crowded urban environments Cargo bikes are now demonstrably faster cheaper and more efficient than diesel vans.

00:10:09: they bypass traffic completely

00:10:10: They part instantly on the sidewalk without rescuing visible fines And fundamentally decarbonize critical last mile of logistics.

00:10:17: This invisible shift how our streets operate ties perfectly into a concept Sebastian Hensler calls a mental availability or visibility.

00:10:25: Oh, I like this part of the deep dive!

00:10:27: Yeah he highlighted a staggering discrepancy.

00:10:31: right now there are nearly two million electric cars on the road but there are seventeen point five million e-bikes and one point three million cargo bikes.

00:10:40: that's huge gap.

00:10:42: we have developed a collective blind spot.

00:10:44: i think We obsess over electric cars constantly.

00:10:47: We

00:10:47: constantly debate EV charging networks, battery ranges and gigafactories because a Tesla is a massive highly visible piece of technology.

00:10:55: it dominates our mental availability.

00:10:57: but Hensler's point Is that the true mobility revolution has already occurred right under our noses.

00:11:02: in these smaller cheaper more agile form factors

00:11:05: Right.

00:11:06: The volume of e-bikes dwarfs electric cars by a massive margin.

00:11:10: Yet we still act like micromobility is a niche novelty.

00:11:13: And the hardware's continually being refined to capture the few demographics that haven't adopted it yet?

00:11:18: Yeah, Chris Tingley actually posted a first-hand review of The Newest Generation Of Lime Bikes noting some very specific deliberate engineering choices they've made.

00:11:27: What did he notice?

00:11:28: Tingley highlighted that power assist is significantly more responsive and granular... ...and turning radius has been drastically tightened Which

00:11:36: might sound like minor tweaks, but they solve a major adoption barrier.

00:11:40: How so?

00:11:41: Older e-bikes often suffered from shirky acceleration at low speeds which is genuinely terrifying for an inexperienced rider trying to navigate tight crowded city traffic.

00:11:53: That makes sense.

00:11:54: by smoothing out the power delivery and making the bike easier to handle, Lyme is lowering the intimidation factor exactly.

00:12:01: it's an engineering choice designed to make the bike feel fundamentally safe and stable for someone who would never identify as a quote unquote cyclist.

00:12:09: It broadens The total addressable market By Making the hardware approachable To everyone.

00:12:14: but you know if we acknowledge that millions of refined e-bikes in commercial cargo bikes are becoming the dominant volume leaders on our streets We run into a massive physical constraint.

00:12:23: The streets themselves,

00:12:24: the cities themselves...the concrete layout of our urban centers was built entirely for cars

00:12:30: Which means that the physical architecture in this city has to catch up with hardware.

00:12:34: Justin Epiaca shared a brilliant framework on how urban planners need rethink this transition.

00:12:40: He stated that transportation planning stops feeling abstract and bureaucratic when you shift your mindset to place not facility

00:12:48: And psychological distinction.

00:12:50: there is profound.

00:12:51: A facility is a bus stop.

00:12:53: Right It's a sterile concrete slab with metal pole and timetable.

00:12:58: You only go there because you have to And want leave as quickly as possible.

00:13:02: A completely utilitarian, miserable space

00:13:05: Exactly!

00:13:06: A mobility hub however must be the place it needs to be vibrant safe intentionally designed location where people actually feel comfortable existing while they seamlessly transition between train a shared e-bike and pedestrian walkway.

00:13:21: Richard Dixon actually shared a stunning real-world example of this in Malmö, Sweden called Sedge Park.

00:13:27: What's Sedge park like?

00:13:28: It is technically a multi story car park but it has constructed almost entirely from laminated timber instead of concrete.

00:13:34: A wooden parking garage

00:13:35: Yes And features fourteen hundred square meters solar panels vertical gardens rainwater reuse systems battery storage and an integrated shared mobility center right on the ground floor.

00:13:46: Wow And the core argument Dixon makes here is really about behavioral psychology.

00:13:52: We cannot continually lecture the public to make sustainable, multimodal transport choices if we force them to interact with the exact same hostile car-centric infrastructure we built in the nineteen seventies.

00:14:05: If you build a dark concrete bunker exclusively for cars human behavior dictates that people will drive cars to fill it

00:14:12: Right.

00:14:13: But if the physical environment natively supports shared mobility, clean energy and pedestrian access that behavior becomes a path of least resistance.

00:14:21: And we are seeing cities move from cute localized pilot projects to massive network-wide deployments like

00:14:28: in Berlin.

00:14:29: Exactly Jonathan Bray has shared his research on Berlin's aggressive expansion of Mobility Hubs.

00:14:34: They aren't just dropping these beautiful integrated hubs into wealthy gentrified neighborhoods.

00:14:40: No, Bray specifically visited a pilot site in Hellerstorf.

00:14:43: A suburb way out on the eastern edge of Berlin.

00:14:46: Right deep into the suburbs.

00:14:48: By pushing these multimodal hubs deeper to the suburbs, Berlin is fundamentally changing the contract with its citizens.

00:14:55: They are treating micromobility hubs as an non-negotiable public utility

00:14:59: ensuring that every citizen has the physical infrastructure to access an e-bike or a cargo bike just like they have access to this subway system.

00:15:07: So

00:15:07: we've established that cities are actively redesigning their physical spaces, carving out pedestrian zones regulating micro mobility and building multimodal hubs.

00:15:16: but how will these newly designed highly regulated pedestrian heavy spaces handle the impending arrival of artificial intelligence in driverless cars?

00:15:24: Ah...the Robotaxi Reality Check!

00:15:26: This is where the tension between futuristic visions and ground level execution, as a most volatile for

00:15:31: sure.

00:15:31: if we look at the demand side first The data is surprisingly strong.

00:15:36: Timo Mellor shared recent McKinsey research that completely flips.

00:15:39: The narrative on who actually uses autonomous vehicles.

00:15:42: Oh the replacement dated.

00:15:43: yes They found that thirty seven percent of shared AV users use the robo taxi to replace A trip they would have otherwise taken in a private car.

00:15:51: That data point is vital because only thirty percent used it to replace a public transport trip.

00:15:57: The persistent fear was always that cheap robotaxes would simply cannibalize subway riders and clog the streets further, but if thirty-seven percent are leaving their private cars in the driveway, robotaxis is proving to be genuine substitute for car

00:16:11: ownership.".

00:16:12: This completely validates perspectives shared by Amanda Frangela.

00:16:16: She argues that the financial markets need to stop evaluating companies like Tesla purely as legacy automakers.

00:16:23: How should they be viewed?

00:16:24: When you look at their aggressive push into robotexes, Their proprietary AI inference chips and their humanoid robotics she asserts They must be modeled as comprehensive AI an autonomy platform

00:16:35: companies.

00:16:36: The potential scale of that platform is staggering.

00:16:38: Yeah But uh...the on-the ground execution Is currently stumbling over massive complex hurdles

00:16:43: Like what we saw in China

00:16:45: Right.

00:16:45: Philip Koopman provided a stark reality check on the actual deployment of these systems.

00:16:50: He highlighted that China recently instituted a temporary, across-the-board freeze in robotaxi deployments following massive stranding incident by Baidu's fleet.

00:17:04: The

00:17:14: Baidu incident didn't just result in a few cars pulling over safely, it caused mass localized gridlock.

00:17:20: It's like train losing power on the tracks.

00:17:22: Every single vehicle behind is paralyzed until obstruction is manually cleared.

00:17:26: Coopman also points out that in U.S.

00:17:28: Waymo still struggling with deeply complex high-stakes edge cases such as safely navigating around school buses

00:17:35: Which are notoriously tricky.

00:17:36: Yeah, because a school bus isn't just a large yellow object.

00:17:39: It is an object surrounded by dynamic legally binding context.

00:17:44: when it's red lights flash traffic in both directions must halt.

00:17:48: human drivers instantly understand this social and legal contract.

00:17:53: teaching a computer vision model to flawlessly interpret And react to that context one hundred percent of the time without fail Is proving incredibly difficult?

00:18:02: And even if the AI reaches perfection, there's a massive macro level problem with how they operate.

00:18:09: which Bojan Jukic articulated brilliantly.

00:18:11: Oh,

00:18:12: the empty miles issue?

00:18:13: Exactly!

00:18:14: Jukich warns that U.S.

00:18:16: rollout of Robotaxis is mirroring exact mistakes in early Uber Roll-Out in twenty fourteen.

00:18:21: How

00:18:22: so?

00:18:22: Uber promised to take cars off road but all those drivers driving empty between pickups actually caused traffic congestion to explode into cities like San Francisco.

00:18:30: Oh wow!

00:18:31: Robotaxes will amplify this problem exponentially because an AI doesn't mind endlessly circling the block empty while waiting for its next fare.

00:18:38: Neither Beijing nor Shenzhen, which are pushing deployment aggressively charge these vehicles for street use or per trip congestion.

00:18:45: So the economic incentive For a robot taxi is to stay in motion rather than pay for parking Which just clogs?

00:18:50: The urban arteries even more right.

00:18:52: but Jukic points out that Europe Is perfectly positioned To absorb this technology because their infrastructure is already actively hostile to empty roaming cars.

00:19:02: That's true.

00:19:03: London enforces massive expensive congestion charging zone.

00:19:07: Milan strictly limits city-center access based on emissions.

00:19:11: European cities have real dynamic curb pricing and extensive thirty kilometer per hour speed limits.

00:19:17: So Europe might lag the US in China, but their regulatory framework will act as a massive shock absorber.

00:19:26: When a robo-taxi company tries to scale in London or Milan, they won't be able let their vehicles circle the block empty because the municipal congestion charges will instantly destroy their profit margins.

00:19:37: The strict infrastructure forces AI to integrate

00:19:39: efficiently.".

00:19:40: It is completely different operating environment and speaking of operating environments Andrew Miller made an observation that highlights fascinating political irony.

00:19:53: Right, absolutely.

00:19:55: But Miller points out that you might intuitively expect highly regulated environmentally focused blue states to lead the adoption of advanced mission reducing technologies.

00:20:05: but reality is exactly opposite.

00:20:07: Miller notes it's libertarian leaning red state like Texas and Arizona aggressively pushing autonomous vehicle.

00:20:16: They are deeply open to automated fleets, while the blue states are far more evident throwing up regulatory roadblocks.

00:20:24: And Miller suggests an incredible irony here.

00:20:27: these deregulated environments in places like Texas might be the very first locations To establish the market conditions that eventually price human driving out of the market entirely.

00:20:37: But letting the tech scale fast recklessly and aggressively they may accelerate The end of the Human Driver much faster than the States trying to carefully manage the transition.

00:20:47: Which is a brilliant synthesis of the entire mobility landscape.

00:20:49: right now, we've spent years romanticizing the technology but the actual revolution is happening through regulatory friction municipal infrastructure and operational math.

00:20:58: it really is which leaves us with a final thought for you to ponder based on the deep dive we impact today.

00:21:04: let's hear

00:21:05: If Europe's infrastructure, with its pedestrian zones strict financial penalties for congestion and highly integrated multimodal hubs is already better suited to tame the inevitable chaos of robotexes.

00:21:19: And if these rapidly advancing AI platforms eventually make human driving a statistical liability.

00:21:25: will private car ownership in this city simply become luxury hobby of past rather than daily necessity?

00:21:31: That's a great question.

00:21:32: The hardware and the AI are rapidly pushing us toward that reality, but ultimately the physical concrete design of the cities we choose to build will dictate how we actually move.

00:21:42: definitely well.

00:21:43: if you enjoyed this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:21:46: also check out our other editions on electrification and battery technology next-gen vehicle intelligence and commercial fleet insights.

00:21:53: thank

00:21:53: you so much for taking this deep dive with us today.

00:21:55: yes Thank You be sure to subscribe So you never miss an addition.

00:21:58: see ya next time.