??????? MOBILITY BRIEF - December 22nd

???? ?????? ???????? ???????? ???????? :

• ?????License to kill…or survive: rescue operation for Bird from…its Canadian licensee and Paris rumored not to renew licenses for free-floating scooters operators from early 2023
• ??????An initiative for more-structured open map data and some interesting news for V2X, regardless of what you put behind this acronym
• ?????Trucks are again in the news this week as adoption is getting wider on one hand, and commercial opportunities getting closer on the other hand
• ???? AV world still focusing on demonstrating their tech is not only a money pit but a cash machine: from robotaxis to logistics, new deployments from Waymo and new partnerships from Uber Freight while Aurora is getting closer to launch
• And all the other news of the week, from Stellantis new EV power trains to Polestar & Cake extending their collaboration.

?????? ?????? ???????????? ??????????????????: ??????'?? ???????? ?????? ???????????? ?????????????? ???????? ?????? Bitume, le podcast qui s’intéresse à l’avenir de nos mobilités !

Ne manquez pas le dernier épisode de notre podcast Bitume, qui prend le temps ce mois-ci de faire le bilan de cette année écoulée, pour mieux se projeter sur l'année suivante : micromobilité, véhicules électriques, nouvelle concurrence asiatique, véhicule autonome, etc...

Disponible dès maintenant sur toutes les plateformes d'écoute ! Ecouter.

???? ??2023 better be good?? must think the team at ????????. Wrong financial reports, market presence reduction, stock price falling as much as triggering a warning from NYSE, etc… Kind of a nightmare year for Bird, still dreaming to taste the sweetness of profitability and hence sustainability. Well, this sweetness may come from maple syrup, as Bird will merge with its independant Canadian licencee, ???????? ????????????. Surely a good news for the company on the short run, but another bad signal is already coming, this time for the whole shared micromobility market: Paris is rumored to end electric scooters free-floating licenses early 2023 according to L’Informé, following disappointments towards the measures taken by the operators to end the safety concerns raised by the municipality. Harsh news from a city amongst the top 5 of shared micromobility usage (according to Fluctuo) and inspiring multiple municipalities on the regulatory side.

????? The War on Google Maps is officially started: ??????????????????, ????????, ?????????????and ???????????? are the founding members of a new initiative led by the ?????????? ????????????????????, called ???????????????? ???????? ????????????????????. A new open map data designed to tackle at ?????????????hegemony through a collaborative yet quality-focused solution. Not a novelty though, as Open Street Maps has been occupying the field for a while, even providing ?????????????????? for Bing Maps. But the new foundation is willing to differentiate itself with its emphasize on interoperability, homogenized and structured data schemas, and be a place to gather various datasets in a single place. The first datasets will be available from the first half of 2023. It’s interesting to see TomTom partnering with tech giants through this initiative, as maps and navigation are the crux of the infotainment ecosystem in our vehicles, where Google is currently making its way, but also an important requirement for autonomous vehicles. Speaking of which, another technology has been designated as having the potential to improve the autonomous experience: V2X, or Vehicle-to-Everything. Ha! Gotcha! You certainly wonder if we’re referring to V2X for energy related technologies (Vehicle-to-Grid, Vehicle-to-Load, etc…) or connectivity tech (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure, Vehicle-to-Vehicle, etc…)? Well we’ll do both, but start with the latter: the capacity for a vehicle to receive and transmit data to and from any other vehicle or infrastructure. After years of hesitations due to regulatory uncertainty and technological immaturity, Democratic law-makers in US are lobbying back for the technology, urging for action from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. A matter of life and death for this V2X, as two years ago, FCC (telco regulatory body) reallocated 60% of the spectrum initially planned for transportation use cases to WiFi.

???? Good thing with portmanteau words such as V2X, is how they can help you to detect the trending technology family you can hide behind. And well, currently, context may be helping but it’s for sure electric V2X who monopolizes discussions. Last example so far with a V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid, using your car battery as an energy buffer for both your house and the grid) study in UK from ????????????, touted as the world’s first and largest. Results are promising: up to 40% monthly energy bill reduction for customers (hence a 93% customer satisfaction rate), up to 10% savings on electricity system infrastructure costs and 45% of CO2 savings between V2G-enabled cars and unmanaged EV charging. All of that while decreasing peak loads. A long way to go before scaling up V2G, but interesting enough results to encourage its development. Coincidentally, the biggest batteries on wheels, trucks and vans, are getting more and more ordered everywhere: US Postal adds 66k EV vehicles to its order to ???????????????and will order BEVs-only from 2026, while (another) ???????????subsidiary ?????????????? ???????? secures its biggest order for its SuperVan, with 1k vehicles in the UAE. Last but not least with some news from the ???????????Semi: ?????????????? will roll out 100 of those next year, but highlights uncertainties regarding its range, as the company will first limit its beverages loadings to 160-km trips, compared to 680-km trips for chips. Or maybe the soda company will wait for them to be autonomous?

???? Well, if ?????????? doesn’t want to wait an eternity, they’ll need to have a look towards ????????????, who claims its Aurora Driver AV system is 100 days away from being ready for commercial launch. It’s close, but not close enough to prevent Aurora’s partner ???????? ?????????????? from signing other strategic partnership in the domain: this week, the happy winner is ?????????? ???????????????????? ?????????????????? (from Volvo AB, not Volvo Cars) whose technology will progressively deployed on ???????? ?????????????? network, starting from Texas. No planning unveiled. Meanwhile on the car side, ?????????? is keeping its pace for commercial services, opening to the public at the Phoenix Airport and expanding its service to all of San Francisco (employees-only in downtown for now). But the impressive pace of deployments in the US isn’t hiding the difficulties these operators can face in their operations, with ???????????? being investigated for blocking roads and sudden brakings. A case that can have a critical impact on the current commercial AV deployment race for both Cruise and the whole industry.

Also in the news this week:

• ?????????????????????inaugurates its first Emotors plant in France, which will ramp up to 1M EV powertrains a year by 2024, starting with its M3 powertrain equipping new models early 2023, from the e-208 to DS3 E-Tense.
• Already working with ?????????????????on an e-bike, ?????????????????is also strengthening its partnership with another Swedish company, ????????, by developing a BEV moped.
• Market and technological realities as well as policies forced ???????????? NEV strategy to shift from a full-hydrogen focus to introducing EVs in its range as a late move helped by Chinese ??????. But ????????????'s President Akio Toyoda haven’t changed his mind on the matter, and is joining Carlos Tavares’s thoughts, as he said in Thailand that the ??silent majority is wondering whether EVS are really OK to have as a single option??.

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