Mario Herger and Sven Beiker discussed different viewpoints on the combined effect of autonomous driving, electric vehicles, and the sharing economy.

We are on the verge of changing our life as we know it. The way people get around today won’t be recognizable by 2030 – and the impact will be huge. Vehicles will increasingly drive themselves, powered by renewable electric energy, connected via ultra-fast data networks, and shared via mobility platforms. While many agree that those are the directions into the future of mobility, there is still some disagreement regarding the speed at which we are moving in those directions.

Some say that the driver’s license will soon be a thing of the past, others point out that things take time given inertia in the industry, market, and regulation. Those different viewpoints make for a great discussion among the two experts for a virtual fireside chat hosted by GABA – German American Business Association on May 26, 2020.

Sven Beiker of Silicon Valley Mobility and Mario Herger met again for a short mobility talk at the beginning of 2020 and analyzed the current situation.

Topics we discussed included:

• Autonomous driving in 2020
• Tesla share: still just a hype?
• Tesla Gigafactory 3 & 4
• Future of traditional car makers

Chart of the Month by Silicon Valley Mobility for January 2018 – infrastructure requirements for advanced mobility and funding gap

The last half year of the chart of the month (07-12/2017) covered the individual trends autonomous, connected, electrified, and shared mobility. The question was often asked, what is missing to move forward in those categories toward a scenario of self-driving, fully connected, all-electric, and conveniently shared vehicles.

The answer is “infrastructure!”, which this month’s chart summarizes. There are 3 categories of infrastructure needed in mobility:
(1) the cvil or built infrastructure with roads, traffic signs
(2) the tech infrastructure with communication and charge networks
(3) the legal infrastructure with permits, standards, taxation

The challenge however is that infrastructure is largely underfunded in many countries; in the U.S. less than half of the existing needs (mostly building and repairing the current roads and bridges…) are covered. That poses big challenges and public-private partnerships are needed to move forward on the agenda for advanced mobility.