The long-awaited smart mobility revolution: A reality?

For Michael Wilshire, Chief Strategy and CTO at BloombergNEF, adoption of electric vehicles will likely be accelerated once price parity is achieved with conventional cars.

By EYTAN HALON
Neolix self-driving vehicle seen at the IEEV New Energy Vehicles Exhibition in Beijing (photo credit: REUTERS)
Neolix self-driving vehicle seen at the IEEV New Energy Vehicles Exhibition in Beijing
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Whether autonomous, connected, electric or shared vehicles, buzzwords surrounding the future of smart mobility seem to have been swirling around for decades.
Seeking to transform that vision into a global reality, leading entrepreneurs, investors and car manufacturers gathered on Monday for the seventh annual Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv.
Technologies on show ranged from advanced autonomous vehicle vision technologies to securing the next generation of in-vehicle innovation from malicious hackers, but one question always remains – what can we truly expect from this long-anticipated revolution on our roads?
“The earthquake has happened, it is the tsunami wave that takes longer to reach shore,” serial entrepreneur Shai Agassi, founder and former CEO of electric vehicle company Better Place, told summit attendees. “In an environment where the final, missing 0.1% means a person killed in a car crash, you have to be a lot more careful. Eventually, we need to convince some insurance company that an autonomous vehicle drives 100 times better than some distracted 18-year-old kid.”
According to Jan Becker, the president, CEO and co-founder of autonomous mobility software company Apex.AI, there was a misconception that progress in the autonomous sector would be linear. Like Agassi, he believes the final stages of development and implementation are proving the hardest.
“The idea that we will have Level 4 or 5 autonomous vehicles driving around our cities has clearly not happened,” said Becker, emphasizing the successful implementation of autonomous vehicles in the construction and mining sector. “I think we are exactly where we should be.”
For Michael Wilshire, chief of strategy and CTO at BloombergNEF, adoption of electric vehicles will likely be accelerated once price parity is achieved with conventional cars.
“Five years ago, there were fewer than one million electric vehicles on the road, and there will probably be eight million by the end of 2019,” said Wilshire. “It’s not a huge number in the context of all vehicles, but the early phases of adoption.”
Wilshire pointed to Norway, where new taxation rules meant electric vehicles have already reached price parity with regular vehicles. The market share of electric vehicles has soared from approximately 1% in 2011 to over 49% by the end of 2018.
“There are still some issues with infrastructure,” he said. “Charging is still a constraint, and by 2020 there will be 400 models – that’s a limited number of models in a fairly differentiated market.”
One example of a city opting to favor autonomous fleets and public transportation over private vehicles is Irvine, California, where Israeli-founded smart mobility service provider Via has teamed up with Hyundai and Pony.ai to launch an autonomous ride-sharing service in the city.
“We really see a change coming in front of our eyes as the world better understands the importance of higher occupancy vehicle in terms of congestion,” said Guy Sher, head of Business Development – Israel at Via. “Other technologies are moving to be integrated in this kind of model of transportation, making public transportation better.”
Forces likely to drive the implementation of smart mobility solutions will include the significant decline in car accidents and new sources of revenue for local and national authorities.
“Once you show a significant decline in car accidents, regulators will be forced to consider the issue,” said Agassi. “The transition is super fast when the regulator wants it to happen. Smart mobility will also become a very big revenue source for cities and mayors. Look at the most expensive real estate in the world – the sidewalks on 5th Avenue. Yet the six or seven lanes in between make no money. The city will be able to charge a tax on miles traveled by autonomous fleets, and still make it cheaper than using your own car.”
According to Wilshire, the emergence of autonomous fleets and ride-sharing also fits into wider consumer trends. As witnessed in other industries, younger consumers are less willing to acquire and own property.
“It is already happening with ride-sharing services, but will also be a driver for autonomous vehicles,” he said. “Other externalities such as air quality are becoming incredibly important. London, for example, is breaking a lot of the European standards on air quality. It wasn’t an issue on the public mind four to five years ago.”


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