Speaker 1: Hey, Dana, Hi Mark. So what is a peak? It's
Speaker 1: the top of a mountain, Okay. Makes me think of
Speaker 1: the three Peaks challenge here in the UK, where you
Speaker 1: hiked to the top of three separate peaks all in
Speaker 1: one day. Okay. I've never done it. I've wanted to
Speaker 1: do it, but I don't think I'm I'm not ready
Speaker 1: for that yet. Next summer in the recording studio too much,
Speaker 1: not in the gym enough. There you go. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: so how about some other peaks? What other kinds of
Speaker 1: peaks are there in terms of maybe like sales or
Speaker 1: usuits of stuff. Well, I think of I think of polaroids,
Speaker 1: how they were really popular there for a bit and
Speaker 1: then maybe have dropped off in everybody else's house except
Speaker 1: for mine. My kids love polaroids. Okay, So what other
Speaker 1: types of things have hit a peak? I know that
Speaker 1: we can talk about like land lines for telephones or
Speaker 1: anything like that, anything that was really popular and then
Speaker 1: maybe sales dropped off or peak. Also makes me think
Speaker 1: of the phrase peak oil, which you may have heard of,
Speaker 1: which has to do with actually the extraction of oil
Speaker 1: from the ground. Yeah, and well, the idea is that
Speaker 1: there might not be as much demand for oil in
Speaker 1: the future, and so maybe we've hit a peak who knows,
Speaker 1: or peak for really a lot of other things, and
Speaker 1: one of those things is peak car. Um So the
Speaker 1: idea there is the concept that you know, we've reached
Speaker 1: as many cars as we're gonna get out out there
Speaker 1: on the road. Do you think that's true. I think
Speaker 1: it could be true because I feel true. I think
Speaker 1: it might feel more true for urban nights than other people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. So today we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about a research note called peak car by our head
Speaker 1: of Mobility, Ali Azadi, who's going to stop us get
Speaker 1: into this concept and see if we are actually at
Speaker 1: a peak for automobiles out on the road. Please note
Speaker 1: that the ANF does not provide investment or strategy advice,
Speaker 1: and you can hear a full disclaimer at the end
Speaker 1: of the show. I'm Mark Taylor and I am Dana Perkins,
Speaker 1: and this is Switched on the b n F podcast. Ali,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us today. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: having me. This note is titled peak car question Mark.
Speaker 1: So theoretically I should be saying peak car, which is
Speaker 1: a bit punchy to be honest, you you're in. I
Speaker 1: see people with cliffhanger jump in because we've got a
Speaker 1: big question mark. So let me ask you, have we
Speaker 1: reached peak car? And if not, when do we reach
Speaker 1: peak car? So whenever people predict something reaching the peak,
Speaker 1: it's it's always turns out to be generally not true.
Speaker 1: So if you remember back in the day where people
Speaker 1: were talking about peak oil supply, now we're talking about
Speaker 1: When we were writing this note, there was a little
Speaker 1: bit of a sense that auto sales are slowing down globally.
Speaker 1: So in last year China auto sales declined for the
Speaker 1: first time in twenty years. This year so far, we've
Speaker 1: seen auto sales declining in many major markets in the US,
Speaker 1: in Europe, and India, so there has been a little
Speaker 1: of a sense that maybe something fundamental is changing this
Speaker 1: time around. So that's why we put the question mark.
Speaker 1: This is all auto sales you're seeing pretty much across
Speaker 1: the world, and this is including trucks. SUV is like,
Speaker 1: what what how do you define autos? Good questions? So
Speaker 1: here we are only talking about cars, so basically thinks
Speaker 1: that individual consumers buy to move around, but we're not
Speaker 1: talking about trucks. That you are talking about SUVs that
Speaker 1: people by, yes, an individual trucks like a flatbed truck
Speaker 1: that you would throw your stuff in, just not a
Speaker 1: or right. Yeah, that's the reason they ask that, because
Speaker 1: people aren't buying sedans anymore. Yeah, so you're also seeing
Speaker 1: consumers taste shift. So in the US, pickup trucks are
Speaker 1: very popular. Outside of the US, you have some markets
Speaker 1: like Thailand that pickup trucks are popular, but SUVs in
Speaker 1: general everywhere are popular, although their types are quite different.
Speaker 1: So there's a shift a little bit from smaller medium
Speaker 1: basically stands two more and more SUVs. There's a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons for that. Some argue that people feel safer
Speaker 1: in them, but some of these also carmakers like subs
Speaker 1: because they make more margins on them. So as they
Speaker 1: make more SUV models available, consumers buy the more. It
Speaker 1: sort of ends up reinforcing a nice cycle. Okay, so
Speaker 1: sales around the world are I don't know week are
Speaker 1: they week by a lot? Is it just kind of
Speaker 1: a one off for the year or is it kind
Speaker 1: of a would you say if it's more of a trend.
Speaker 1: So this is what we were trying to address. UM
Speaker 1: and in our view, in most markets you're gonna see
Speaker 1: sales recover. There are a few markets, for example of Japan,
Speaker 1: where demographics are essentially the main culprit. You have a
Speaker 1: declining total population coupled with an aging society. Essentially fundamental
Speaker 1: demand is going down. But if you look at out
Speaker 1: our markets, say China or say US, we still expect
Speaker 1: sales to gradually recover. In China in particular, the motorization
Speaker 1: rate is still relatively low. A lot of the decline
Speaker 1: that you're saying this series got to do with macroeconomic factors.
Speaker 1: So is this something that you would see in the
Speaker 1: longer term as a bit cyclical because we saw a
Speaker 1: big drop in what was it two eight, and we're
Speaker 1: seeing another drop now. So is this almost a decadal
Speaker 1: thing where we can expect that or is it something
Speaker 1: else to play. Sure, you're absolutely right that car sales
Speaker 1: historically have been somewhat cyclical. They do respond to economic cycles. Now,
Speaker 1: some sometimes people make the mistakes of assuming that GDP
Speaker 1: growth rates and car sales are want to uncorrelated. The
Speaker 1: correlation between new car sales and GDP. There is a
Speaker 1: bit of a b correlation there, But what really correlate
Speaker 1: is very well, would GDP growth rates, or to be
Speaker 1: more accurate, GDP per capital growth rates, it's actually the
Speaker 1: total distance that the fleet drives every year. The reason
Speaker 1: for that is, let's say the financial crisis is a
Speaker 1: good example. What happened in the aftermath of that is
Speaker 1: you had a lot of people losing their job, and
Speaker 1: in a country like US, a lot of people drive
Speaker 1: to go to their work. So once you've lost your
Speaker 1: job and you don't have an income, first of all,
Speaker 1: you're not going to work, but also you have to
Speaker 1: conserve your money, so you're driving less. So historically there's
Speaker 1: a much stronger correlation between GDP per capital growth rates
Speaker 1: as well as the total distance that the fleet drives.
Speaker 1: From that relationship, then you can start calculating, okay, depending
Speaker 1: on how the GDP does, GDP or unemployment rates, because
Speaker 1: it seems like you're trying it to steady income and
Speaker 1: than having a car, so you could make it much
Speaker 1: more granular oil and you could start breaking it apart
Speaker 1: of those factors um Having said that, from a macroeconomic perspective,
Speaker 1: the diduper capita seems to be a good factor. You
Speaker 1: can obviously go much more sophisticated. There's other issues. It
Speaker 1: depends on your araban versus rural population, what's the composition
Speaker 1: of the economy, So you can add more and more
Speaker 1: elements of making it much more sophisticated. But what we
Speaker 1: found out in this note is actually, for a country
Speaker 1: like US, if you look at historical relationship gjper capita
Speaker 1: and the total distance driven by the fly works out
Speaker 1: really nicely. It's actually quite beautiful. It's a constant number
Speaker 1: which then you can use and then you can rely
Speaker 1: on external forecast like what the World Bank says or
Speaker 1: for the GDP and what the U N Population Division
Speaker 1: says for population to then come out with the view
Speaker 1: of how much travel you expect to fleet to do
Speaker 1: in the future. And you're seeing global commonalities, which I
Speaker 1: think is really interesting because each of these markets on
Speaker 1: their own seems unique. Can you just quickly outline what
Speaker 1: other countries you're looking at here and then maybe pick
Speaker 1: the one that you want to expand on. So we've
Speaker 1: tried to cover all the major markets um. So we
Speaker 1: have individual forecast for US, China, India, Japan, Korea, Germany, UK,
Speaker 1: France and Europe as a whole. Um. We also do
Speaker 1: Australia because our team in Australia is very interested in
Speaker 1: knowing what will happen in our market. And then we
Speaker 1: also look at trying to moll forecast the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, which is a fairly big pocket category in
Speaker 1: terms of the differences. While there is commonality in the
Speaker 1: sense that from a macroeconomic perspective, you can make an
Speaker 1: assumption that in most markets the total distance driven by
Speaker 1: the fleet is correlated with geper capita, it's very different
Speaker 1: starting point for each country. So take the US. US
Speaker 1: has one of the highest mortorization rates in the world,
Speaker 1: meaning that people have a lot of cars. In many cases,
Speaker 1: households have more than one car. In a country like
Speaker 1: the US, If you look at your fleet on the street,
Speaker 1: how much of it is owned by individuals, whereas how
Speaker 1: much of it is in taxis or right hailing companies
Speaker 1: or car sharing companies, Those numbers in the US are
Speaker 1: heavily in favor of the privately owned vehicles. So if
Speaker 1: you look at the demand for transportations, if you look
Speaker 1: at it last year, the total distance traveled by the
Speaker 1: car fleet in the US, something around of that distance
Speaker 1: was traveled by the cars that people owned only About
Speaker 1: two point six three percent was by taxis, car sharing
Speaker 1: and right hailing. Even though right hailing you think of
Speaker 1: Uber and Left and Minia leaders your contribution the total
Speaker 1: distance traveled by the fleet is still relatively low. You
Speaker 1: go to a country like India, where private vehicle ownership
Speaker 1: is very low, overall motorization rate is still very low.
Speaker 1: The relative contribution of taxis as well as hailed cars
Speaker 1: like Ala and again Uger operates in India, their contribution
Speaker 1: is a lot higher. In India last year we estimated
Speaker 1: off the distance traveled by the fleet, roughly one third
Speaker 1: was by the shared modes of mobility, very different right
Speaker 1: quite extreme. And then if you go to a country
Speaker 1: like Japan, where public transit infrastructure is really good and
Speaker 1: taxes are relatively expensive and regulation prevents private right hailing,
Speaker 1: then the number contributed by these shared modes even lower,
Speaker 1: so it's below one percent. So there's a very wide
Speaker 1: geographical difference around your starting point, which really has to
Speaker 1: do with how do you get around today? And is
Speaker 1: this alternate better than how you get around today? So
Speaker 1: in India, I suppose it is better than maybe a
Speaker 1: bus or walking or biking or even I've seen multiple
Speaker 1: people climbed on kind of a three wheeler before, and
Speaker 1: are are these vehicles? Are these shared ride services replacing
Speaker 1: that stuff or is it replacing mass transit the buses
Speaker 1: and a few subways. Very good questions. One clarification around
Speaker 1: our forecast, So this time around, we we're only trying
Speaker 1: to forecast the car sales, so we're very much focused
Speaker 1: on the four wheeler. But you're hitting the nail in
Speaker 1: the sense that when people talk about these new shared
Speaker 1: mobility services, there's always a question around are these complementary
Speaker 1: or already is competitive with existing modes. If you look
Speaker 1: at uber and Lift and who did they disrupts today
Speaker 1: in the US, Uber and Lift primarily have disrupted taxis
Speaker 1: and public transit. Essentially in many municipalities like New York,
Speaker 1: like San Francisco, there was a decline in ridership on
Speaker 1: public transit. So from a public policy perspective, given that
Speaker 1: they also increase congestion in those cities, this becomes a
Speaker 1: bit of an issue. But if you go to India
Speaker 1: or Southeast Asia where Grab and Gorjack operate in those markets,
Speaker 1: you had a large segment of the population being underserved
Speaker 1: by existing available options. So privately weekicle ownership is out
Speaker 1: of the reach of many segments in the population. It's
Speaker 1: simply too expensive. Public transit is not enough, and the
Speaker 1: available taxes or even the tuk tuks and the two
Speaker 1: leaders over there, they were still not enough. There was
Speaker 1: not a good way of balancing supply and demand. What
Speaker 1: all of what ubers India operation and what GRAB and
Speaker 1: Gorja have done is essentially they have brought access to
Speaker 1: mobility to a large segment of the population in those
Speaker 1: markets that was underserved. So they're acting as a very
Speaker 1: nice complementary solution to what existed and even enabling social mobility.
Speaker 1: So you could imagine people who wanted to get a
Speaker 1: job but in their local within their walking distance there
Speaker 1: was no job. Now that person can actually afford to
Speaker 1: travel to the further way and get a joll. So
Speaker 1: in this world of now digital right hailing, we've created
Speaker 1: some jobs. And you actually in this note have a
Speaker 1: little part where you say the holy grail for digital
Speaker 1: hailing services is the realization of robotaxis. UM, I don't
Speaker 1: particularly want the terminator to be driving me around, but
Speaker 1: if the way I see it is you're talking about
Speaker 1: job creation and people themselves buying cars. The fleet is
Speaker 1: not owned by these right hailing services is owned by
Speaker 1: the individual who's going to own the cars if they're robotaxis.
Speaker 1: So again here we shall clarify that. Um, there's the
Speaker 1: differences in each geography. If you look at uber and
Speaker 1: left in North America or in Europe. Um, so we
Speaker 1: were operating Europe as well as you. It's European competitors.
Speaker 1: Right now, they're not profitable and if you look at
Speaker 1: their losses, the number one cost that they have is
Speaker 1: the driver pay. So that's the part that it's still
Speaker 1: proving very challenging for them. Now. They argue that they
Speaker 1: will be able to reduce their auto cost, improve operational efficiency,
Speaker 1: and be able to try to improve their profitability by
Speaker 1: controlling the auto cost. The jury is still out whether
Speaker 1: there's enough of other costs that they can cut while
Speaker 1: keeping the driver In markets like Europe and North America,
Speaker 1: will driver pay even the people argue driver pay is
Speaker 1: really low, it's still it's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: problem in the case of the economics of making those
Speaker 1: companies profitable. So if you replace those with autonous vehicles,
Speaker 1: depending on what the capital cost of the autonous vehicles
Speaker 1: is which you're alluding to. You could argue that you're
Speaker 1: essentially getting rid of this opera cost that you always have.
Speaker 1: So if you think about if you are Uber and
Speaker 1: you want to scale the number of rides you're giving,
Speaker 1: you still have to pay the drivers more and more
Speaker 1: and more, Whereas if you have an autonomous vehicle that
Speaker 1: can go around twenty four hours, then you're essentially reducing
Speaker 1: that operational cost that you're paying the drivers. It's a
Speaker 1: big capital investment, and I assume the insurance is covered
Speaker 1: by the drivers as opposed to these other companies. The
Speaker 1: big difference between being a platform and an owner of assets. Right.
Speaker 1: While you're right that the capital cost would be high,
Speaker 1: the capital cost would be more of a one off payment,
Speaker 1: so as you increase the utilization, that doesn't linearly increase,
Speaker 1: whereas with drivers it's essentially a linear relationship that increases.
Speaker 1: So that's that's for those markets. There is this belief
Speaker 1: that if you have atonus vehicles you'll be able to
Speaker 1: do But the reason we call this, by the way,
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail was the Holy Graian was never found
Speaker 1: even by Indiana Jones he found it. But yes, Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: it's fictional. So this has been a first vehicle sales forecast,
Speaker 1: is that correct? That's right? So in that are you
Speaker 1: giving a hint to what you think the the outcome
Speaker 1: will be for robotaxis. You know you're less optimistic, it
Speaker 1: seems I think we're realistic. So we do give a
Speaker 1: forecast in this view and in our forecast for the
Speaker 1: next ten years. So from now until we expect that
Speaker 1: you will have less than two hunder thou robot taxes
Speaker 1: on the road, not enough to make a meaningful difference
Speaker 1: in sales. From an quantitative perspective, that may seem that
Speaker 1: this is very low, it is still meaningful from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the right hailing companies utilization exactly as well
Speaker 1: as automakers. So if you're an automaker, particularly if you're
Speaker 1: a mass market automaker, if you look at uber and
Speaker 1: Lift in the US, the most popular car that uberan
Speaker 1: Lift drivers drive today in US is a used Prius
Speaker 1: because it's upfront cost is relatively low, it has good
Speaker 1: field economy, so the operation cost is really low. So
Speaker 1: if your Turta, you really care about that, and that's
Speaker 1: why Tota is also invest in uber a TG, so
Speaker 1: they're working together on developing autonomous vehicle technology longer term.
Speaker 1: By twenty forty, we expect that about seven percent of
Speaker 1: the load. So again, looking at the total distance that
Speaker 1: definitely drives in twenty we expect seven percent of that
Speaker 1: to be carried by autonomus vehicles. Seven percent may sound
Speaker 1: relatively low, keep in mind, if you look at the
Speaker 1: total distance the car fullet drove last year, only five
Speaker 1: percent of that total distance was by shared mobility. So
Speaker 1: we expect that five percent in total to grow to
Speaker 1: and off that nine pcent, about one third of it
Speaker 1: will be autonomous. Two thirds of it will still be
Speaker 1: human driven. Now you may argue why would still be
Speaker 1: human driven, and it goes back to what data you
Speaker 1: were alluding to earlier. In markets like India or Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia or Africa, or also even in developed economies, say
Speaker 1: rural United States or rural Europe, from a cost and
Speaker 1: technological perspective, it will still not We don't expect it
Speaker 1: to be feasible to rely on Thomas vehicles, So if
Speaker 1: you're in rural Texas, for example, the utilization rate is
Speaker 1: still relatively low. Also, you have to make sure that
Speaker 1: your technology can adapt to that environment that rural Texas,
Speaker 1: to be fair, the weather is not that bad. But
Speaker 1: you go to rural Wisconsin snows a lot. So you
Speaker 1: run into a lot of practical issues. Um and that's
Speaker 1: where while we do expect the technology to improve a lot,
Speaker 1: we're still from what's known today. There's still a lot
Speaker 1: of challenges that remain to be resolved. About halfway through
Speaker 1: peak car question mark, but you get into this place
Speaker 1: of uncertainties and it seems like there is so much
Speaker 1: to wrap your arms around in terms of what is
Speaker 1: actually influencing car ownership rates as opposed to just do
Speaker 1: I want to be on the tube today or do
Speaker 1: I want to be in my own car? And can
Speaker 1: I find park? So there are three things you outline
Speaker 1: under these fundamental changes to actually how people and more
Speaker 1: importantly goods are moving around at the local level but
Speaker 1: really commonly around the world. Can you outline what those
Speaker 1: three areas are? So one, as you alluded earlier on,
Speaker 1: is around sort of black Swan type so financial crisis
Speaker 1: things like that, or you could put in wars and
Speaker 1: things like that. So those definitely impact. And there's something
Speaker 1: that like unfortunately we are mortal analysts recount forecast those things.
Speaker 1: The second one and the third one, which are areas
Speaker 1: that we're going to do a lot more work on
Speaker 1: in the future. Is one is around the whole impact
Speaker 1: of e commerce. So if you think about e commerce
Speaker 1: and how you are now buying your daily necessities, you're
Speaker 1: essentially more and more eliminating they need to drive to
Speaker 1: the grocery store, or they need to go to cost
Speaker 1: goal on the weekend or something like that. So those
Speaker 1: are areas that could fundamentally impact people's need for cars.
Speaker 1: A lot of times when people talk about one to
Speaker 1: own a car is I want to carry something. So
Speaker 1: if you elimit it that part and you don't need
Speaker 1: to carry heavy loads, then you may argue that maybe
Speaker 1: you can rely on a bicycle. Part of the challenge
Speaker 1: today is like, if you look at the historical correlation
Speaker 1: that I mentioned that we use for forecasting the impact
Speaker 1: of e commerce on that historical correlation has not appeared yet.
Speaker 1: So will this end up in what you guys see
Speaker 1: it as see it appearing? It potentially could, So this
Speaker 1: is an area that you're we're looking at quite extensively.
Speaker 1: This and this ties to the second one, which I
Speaker 1: mentioned briefly the bicycle one. So the question of micro mobility,
Speaker 1: So micro mobility to define it is basically stand up scooters,
Speaker 1: electric assists by bicycles which are provided on a shared
Speaker 1: platform so you don't even have to own it yourself.
Speaker 1: And the reason this is an interesting area is pick
Speaker 1: the United States. If you look at the statistics on
Speaker 1: how cars are using the United States. If you look
Speaker 1: at the numbers from recent um the last couple years,
Speaker 1: roughly sixty percent of the average card trip is less
Speaker 1: than six miles. Within that about half of it is
Speaker 1: less than three miles. Essentially, it's people driving the car,
Speaker 1: the big suv, just going down the street to buy
Speaker 1: some stuff. Now, those are distances that if you're within
Speaker 1: less than two miles, we can easily do with a
Speaker 1: stand up scooter. If it's less than if it's between
Speaker 1: two moles and six months, we can do with and
Speaker 1: that actually this bicycle. And we have seen a lot
Speaker 1: of money go to these shared micro mobility applications. So
Speaker 1: Baird was a bird and line where both some of
Speaker 1: the fastest unicorns ever I think burn for bird. It
Speaker 1: took it less than a year to have evaluation of
Speaker 1: world billion dollars, which is quite remarkable. And there's this
Speaker 1: idea one of the famous um Um sort of gurus
Speaker 1: of micro mobility horse did you like to call it?
Speaker 1: The concept of unbundling the car. So essentially you're looking
Speaker 1: at how people use cars for different applications. There's all
Speaker 1: those applications that you can actually use automodes of transport.
Speaker 1: Are you seeing this outside of major urban center, so
Speaker 1: where a car sometimes comes with more hassle than it's
Speaker 1: worth because I can't see, for example, my brother in
Speaker 1: law in Kentucky hopping on a micro mobility scooter and
Speaker 1: running to the store when he's got a car already
Speaker 1: sitting in the driveway as I see as the summer time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of open questions. One is,
Speaker 1: as you're alluding to, is the rule versus urban, which
Speaker 1: is a very valid one. So again goes down around
Speaker 1: your what are the distances that we're discussing. The other
Speaker 1: one that I would like to point out is, of course,
Speaker 1: whether so these things initially, particularly stand of scooters, took
Speaker 1: off in California. California sunny is relatively dry, but what
Speaker 1: about say winter in New York. But they also took
Speaker 1: off in Paris right where it reigns a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now we're starting so this is so thank you
Speaker 1: for making the point. Um. There was initially some skepticism
Speaker 1: which was like, oh, these California vcs are just putting
Speaker 1: money behind something that's not going to go around the world.
Speaker 1: And what we've seen actually is now going around the world.
Speaker 1: And you have also while this some people are I
Speaker 1: think that this is a California thing. Actually shared bicycles
Speaker 1: these platforms took over China a lot earlier, and then
Speaker 1: from China and around the world, so we see it
Speaker 1: has legs. But there the question that's still very hard
Speaker 1: to answer is how much of that demand is going
Speaker 1: to get attributed to these services. What we've already seen
Speaker 1: is that there have been two winters already since some
Speaker 1: of these new companies were launched, and they have survived
Speaker 1: those and even in winters, there was still a little
Speaker 1: bit of demand for these services. Um, so we do
Speaker 1: see that it has legs in it. It's just a
Speaker 1: question of how much of the demand will get shifted
Speaker 1: to them. And carmakers are becoming very interested in them
Speaker 1: as well, So carmakers are looking at it. This could
Speaker 1: potentially be a competitor. Is there something we could do
Speaker 1: about it? Should be invest in it. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of interest around this last mile and this kind
Speaker 1: of space close to your home. And there's this other
Speaker 1: category that you actually go into, which is which are
Speaker 1: autonomous shuttles that looked like they might fill the same
Speaker 1: and maybe get around some of the weather issues. My
Speaker 1: question is though, where where are they? I've not seen
Speaker 1: any yet and are they taking off? Are they a
Speaker 1: lot of potential right now? Very good questions. So when
Speaker 1: I was talking about the roll a taxi, that was
Speaker 1: the idea of that you have an autonous vehicle which
Speaker 1: is kind of similar to your taxes today. It's on
Speaker 1: public roads, it's mixed with traffic that's still include human drivers,
Speaker 1: so they are more or less very similar to car
Speaker 1: and cars by essentially you replace a drive over there.
Speaker 1: In the autono shuttle case, you're talking about low speed
Speaker 1: applications where you have a vehicle that's designated to specific area.
Speaker 1: The technical term dual fenced to make it fancy, so
Speaker 1: you can think of, for example, in the city area
Speaker 1: and just London like or or if you're from down Under,
Speaker 1: you would say the CBD, the and the business district
Speaker 1: basically central this dis district or a university campus, or
Speaker 1: think about airports if you have low speed geo fenced applications.
Speaker 1: The technology is already available. There are companies like two
Speaker 1: French companies, Navya and Easy Mouths. There's US company like
Speaker 1: NA Mobility, which might have been name Mobility. Toyto's venture
Speaker 1: Arms has invested it. They're making these sort of like shuttles.
Speaker 1: They're essentially things that you could you have already seen
Speaker 1: at airports, like sometimes those shuttles that you take out
Speaker 1: airports Togo, but now they're automated with those. What you
Speaker 1: could argue is that essentially there are form of public transit,
Speaker 1: but they're much more flexible. You don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about Okay, if you want to run these things twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, what are we going to do about the drivers?
Speaker 1: There are also a lot more flexible than say subways
Speaker 1: or autonomous model rails for them. The main questions around
Speaker 1: deployment is actually much more about local policy, or a
Speaker 1: better world would be local politics. Let's say you want
Speaker 1: to deploy it in city like London, how would TfL's
Speaker 1: labor union respond to this because essentially you're talking about
Speaker 1: competitive position that could have any impact on jobs. Is
Speaker 1: there a chance this is an area that sort of business,
Speaker 1: which is private technically could expand into because I can
Speaker 1: see people with their local travel card getting a little
Speaker 1: bit frustrated to have an additional fee tacked on to
Speaker 1: the end if you have So this all comes down
Speaker 1: to which type of road you're considering. So one of
Speaker 1: the really interesting deployments around these technologies is in retirement
Speaker 1: communities in United States. So in Florida, for example, there's
Speaker 1: a retirement community called the Villages. Actually, most of retirement
Speaker 1: community in the US are called the Villages. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but one of the biggest one has a
Speaker 1: partnership with Voyage, one of these new companies that's debluting
Speaker 1: the technology, and they're there. Most of the roads are private,
Speaker 1: so the retirement community can decide what they want to
Speaker 1: do with it, and they've already had this partnership where
Speaker 1: they're deploying them. So yes, I agree with you that
Speaker 1: you could have if if you have large businesses that
Speaker 1: have rights over the roadways like the university campus. But
Speaker 1: in cities it becomes much more complicated. So We've had
Speaker 1: a chance to jump into a few parts of this note,
Speaker 1: and I know that we've not gotten all of the
Speaker 1: stories out of you, so people can read more if
Speaker 1: they want. My question is this seems like it's the
Speaker 1: beginning of a lot more questions that have been raised.
Speaker 1: What is next in your research pipeline? You're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of art factors we need to consider.
Speaker 1: So the first thing you're doing is to better understand
Speaker 1: how moral shifts might happen. So that question how much
Speaker 1: of the demand we'll go to Michael movies. We want
Speaker 1: to actually look deeper into what happened historically. So one
Speaker 1: of our team members right now is writing a note
Speaker 1: looking at the UK since the nineteen fifties when initially
Speaker 1: everyone was relying on trains and like probably and then
Speaker 1: when the cars became more and more popular, how model
Speaker 1: shift happened there. So we're gonna do a historical deep
Speaker 1: slive on the UK. Then we're going to expand it
Speaker 1: to more countries and better understand how these shifts happen.
Speaker 1: Obviously technology plays a role, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: also comes down to policy and cultural values even and
Speaker 1: based on those try to then come up with scenarios
Speaker 1: of how it may play out in the future, because
Speaker 1: we as a business to a lot of forecasts. So
Speaker 1: I guess you've got to look back before you can
Speaker 1: look forward, right, You're absolutely right, Ali, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us today. Thank you very much, Dania
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