The automotive industry is evolving rapidly, and customer expectations are rising just as fast. Consumers expect seamless service, personal communication, and a consistent experience across every interaction.
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Honda recently unveiled new information about its 0 Series, its latest venture into electric vehicles. It announced a new cutting-edge operating system called Asimo, designed to adapt and evolve continuously based on the driver’s preferences. According to Honda, it features a "new level of intelligent vehicle technology." At CES, it demonstrated how a driver interacted with a ‘friend’ chatbot quite reminiscent of the AI from Her.
There was a lot of talk recently about Honda and Nissan’s announcement to merge and create the world’s third-largest automaker.
Did you know that EV car batteries are often given a new life beyond the car industry? I’m not talking about recycling, which is of course really important, but dismantling, repairing and repurposing EV batteries for a completely different goal.
The frustratingly fragmented state of the EV industry is one of the biggest obstacles to widespread EV adoption. The concept of “standards” and interoperability may seem boring, but they are what makes the world seamlessly go around. Just imagine if we did not have any protocols for the internet, bluetooth or payments.
52.7% of Chinese see “cars evolving from transport to cozy living spaces.” 62.4% of consumers are eager to invest in car camping gear, like car-side tents, storage boxes and more. 66% of respondents see their cars as a mobile living room, while 48.6% use their vehicles as a stress-free retreat. These were some interesting numbers by Caijing that I learned from Ashley Dudarenok.
I recently noticed several news items in the domain of eVTOLs (electric vertical take-off and landing aircrafts). Indian company ePlane is targeting 2026 for the commercialization of its e200x eVTOL. Their government is pushing air taxis because of worsening traffic congestion. Eve Air Mobility obtained a $50 million loan from Citibank to accelerate its eVTOL aircraft development. In China, Xpeng Aeroht broke ground on the world’s first assembly line for flying cars, marking a major milestone to mass adoption.
Even though we have made a lot of progress in the previous years, range anxiety is still an important stumbling block for EV adoption. So I thought I’d discuss some alternative charging methods that I came across in the past months and years:
There was some commotion recently around Hyundai's next-generation hydrogen SUV which had been spied testing IRL, so I felt inspired to write about hydrogen cars. I find it to be one of the more interesting alternative energy sources at there: it is super clean on the one hand, but it also presents quite some challenges in several domains.
One of the biggest problems in innovation is that the pace of certain markets is often a lot faster than that of regulation, governments and even adjacent markets. Don’t get me wrong, we need regulation, especially when it comes to mobility where the lives people are at stake. But sometimes, well-intended measures turn out to be completely counterproductive because of differences in speed.
Everyone who’s interested in the relationship between the West and China and knows how markets work, probably saw it coming that import tariffs would not help protect the European car market in the long term.
If we want autonomous driving to truly mature and scale, there are still quite a few hurdles we need to overcome. And contrary to popular belief, it’s not just about technological advancements. The way I see it, here are the biggest challenges before we enter the era of self-driving cars:
After having had some time to reflect on everything I learned from the nexxworks AI tour in Munich, I want to share my top three takeaways from all the fantastic company visits:
Our CEO Patrick Vanbrabandt recently came back really energized, from a Nexxworks’ tour in Munich, where he visited some of the most successful AI pioneers in the world. Unsurprisingly, many companies today are heavily experimenting with AI because we may very well be on the cusp of a paradigm change.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, at the time of the rapid rise of the internet and mobile networks, telco companies - internet service providers and mobile network operators – experienced an important shift. Their infrastructure was still crucial but they also did not add significant value beyond providing fast and reliable but basic connectivity for users to access the internet and apps.
According to J.D. Power’s 2024 U.S. Tech Experience Index Study (link in the comments), a lot of new in-car tech is perceived as “not necessary” by the consumer. The study shows that, for instance, drivers still prefer hands-on tech.
This is what you (probably) don’t know about EVs in Norway: In August of this year, no less than 94% of all new car sales in Norway were electric vehicles (EVs). That’s a staggering statistic and a very big contrast with EV sales in the rest of Europe, where high prices and insufficient infrastructure have restricted the adoption.
Not so long ago, the LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery technology for EVs was disregarded because of its many challenges:
According to our CEO Patrick Vanbrabandt, one of the most fascinating challenges in the automotive industry is the shift in business models. Where they, and car dealers, used to gather a big portion of their revenue with after-sales maintenance services, this revenue has dramatically decreased with the rise of electric mobility (which needs a lot less manual upkeep).
We saw some interesting pieces of news pass the revue the past weeks, and two of these had to do with smaller models:
There has been a lot of talk about how cars have become “software-defined vehicles” or, if you prefer, “smartphones on wheels” or “rolling computers”. One of the biggest advantages of that are OTA (over-the-air) updates, where a vehicle receives the very latest functionalities from the comfort of the driver’s home, or wherever (s)he is. But not much attention is being paid to the fact that the hardware – the car – will at one point no longer support the updates, just like happens with smartphones. The biggest challenge is that, while smartphones typically receive updates for 6 to 8 years, the average age of vehicles is now at 12.6 years in the US and 12.3 years in Europe.
The Big promise of autonomous mobility was that it would help us save time, one of the most precious goods of our current era. We would be able to work, sleep or relax on the move while our cars would be doing all the driving. That vision still seems a long way off today - and it would probably do us good to adjust our expectations (check our recent post about that in the comments) – but there are already ways that you can save time in cars with semi-autonomous features.
In an age where frictionless experiences are increasingly valued, mobility consumers are more and more attracted to combined forms of transportation. They use their city car for long distance travel, take the train to city centers, rent vans to go on holidays, have e-bikes for longer intercity distances, rent steps for the last mile, etc. So it should not exactly come as a surprise that both car brands and car dealers are increasingly embracing this hybrid type of mobility too.
Our CEO Patrick Vanbrabandt recently attended a Mercedes event where Wolfgang Bremm von Kleinsorgen, their BeNeLux CEO, said something that caught his attention: “We are evolving from a car company into a software and hardware company”. As bold as the statement seems, it’s an ambition of many automotive companies.
If you ask our CEO Patrick Vanbrabandt when he believes that we will arrive at Level 5 full driving automation, you could probably expect an answer along the lines of “We need to adjust our expectations in the matter.” This is what he means by that:
Last week, we shared the insights of our CEO Patrick Vanbrabandt about his latest innovation expedition to China. One of those was about seeing China less as a threat than an opportunity and, always the optimists, we wanted to dig a little deeper into that specific subject.
Our CEO Patrick Vanbrabandt loves to tour the world in search of the latest tech and mobility innovations and share his insights with our team, our customers and our fans. So we’re very excited to share his learnings from his most recent innovation trip to China:
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