Hosts: Gerard Reid & Laurent Segalen
Guest: James Carter | Principal Consultant | Vision Mobility
Category: ⚡ Renewable Energy
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[1:50] “We should see [EV] global numbers around the 3.5 to 4 million mark this year. Global penetration does vary by geography. Obviously, in Europe, we’re somewhere in the 5 to 10% range, depending on which country you're [in]. Norway, obviously, is closer to 60%. However, here in North America we’re much lower, somewhere between 1.5 and 3%, depending on where you are. Canada […] certainly on the upper end of that, around 3.5 to 4%. The […] trend that we're seeing right across the board is these numbers continue to trend roughly at somewhere between 40 and 60% kegger per year. So this strong growth is really, really indicative of where the market’s going.”
[5:25] “We take ourselves back a year, we really did not see any good incumbent product coming out or announced by OEMs. Tesla is obviously still the king of the new type of OEMs that have come through. But there's a realization that as incumbent OEMs have shown products and made announcements that there is very much strength in what they had to offer. And I think what we've got to remember in all of this is the development cycle that every OEM has. Incumbent OEMs tend to keep things a little bit under wraps for the first little while.”
[7:14] “When we take a look at OEMs in general, we're really only starting to find out now whether they had been proactive or reactive, by previewing some of the products that they've got coming. We would have said a year ago that Ford hasn't really done anything and that they were reactive. But now we understand that really, that actually being proactive in switching themselves towards EVs, moving forward.”
[10:05] “In my opinion, we're really only at the start of China's penetration into the mainstream markets. Europe is going to be an early mover for the Chinese, particularly in the low to medium cost range and the ability to offer good products at excellent value. And I think that's where a competitive advantage is that they'll have.”
[11:56] “Rivian is still going to be first to market with an electric pickup. And that was smart in not positioning themselves up against the D3. Financially, Rivian is in a good position because they have money […] from Amazon […]. So I really think they have secured a strong foundation moving forward. One of the issues that they're going to face is this huge onslaught of pickup trucks coming through. Since they announced we had Cybertruck come through, we've had F150, we've seen Hummer and the GM related products. […] Point is that this market is going to get saturated very, very quickly with EV products out there.”
[16:40] “Incumbent OEMs have […] [tried] to secure a future supply and not relying on tier ones to do it. So they secure the supply directly for themselves. And we've seen European and American OEMs, and Tesla all go out and actually sign contracts with mining companies directly so that they can make sure that they get their supply of lithium, or cobalt or nickel, or whatever that they need for the batteries. And also, I believe we'll see the same thing happen with securing rare earths for magnets in motors, one thing that will be very important moving forward on the hardware side. On the battery software management systems, this whole software component really has much more to be exploited in the future, not just on the management side. But how over the air updates work, both for the vehicle, for the battery, for the entertainment system, we could also roll autonomous development into that as well. So this whole idea of software becoming far more integrated within the vehicle is going to be very important moving forward.”
[18:33] “The data that Tesla's been collecting, they've realized that there's an applicability not just for […] autonomous drive development, but also for insurance and how that vehicle reacts and insurance. And it's why Tesla's decided that they really can do quite nicely out of that, because they own all the data that's coming out of those vehicles. So that is a really interesting development in the way that this data can be used. It's taken quite a while really, for other OEMs to clue into this, because there's much more of a traditional mindset.”
[21:40] “The business model between now and full autonomy is still taking a bit to figure itself out. If we have a look at Uber and Lyft and others, they're not exactly profitable to say the least. And if we have a look at things like subscription, and other car clubs, profitability has been an issue. So as we move forward, there's going to be some new developments in pre-autonomous mobility as a service type things for vehicles. But it's really autonomous that are really open the door. The other interesting idea to consider is multimodal mass, i.e. integration with vehicle type services into systems like rail, like subways, even things like say, BlaBlaCar where you can get a ride over a longer distance. Those things are going to be really interesting to see what that will look like as we move forward.”
Rating: ⚡⚡
🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify
🕰️ 33 min | 🗓️ 08/01/2021
✅ Time saved: 31 min
