Recap: Mercedes-Benz OS strategy and Geely’s Galaxy launch - MobilityBRIEF ??????? - February 24th
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In the news this week
Mercedes-Benz OS strategy and Geely’s Galaxy launch
This week, let's dig into the announcements made by Mercedes-Benz and Geely Auto in both their events this week, where the focus was on updating their roadmaps on, respectively, their digital ecosystem and their new energy vehicles. With some overlap from the latter.
Mercedes Benz Operating System Strategy Update - Feb. 22nd
Starting with the silver arrows, providing an update on MB.OS, their in-house operating system succeeding to MB.UX and planned for 2025 with the MMA (Mercedes Modular Architecture) E/E architecture. What can we learn from this event?
In a nutshell:
Oh, and by the way, Mercedes-Benz has made his choice: for them, ADAS means LIDAR, and Luminar will be their partner for it (a huge contract for Luminar). And Level 3 is coming.
First taste of this future MB.OS with MB.UX 3rd gen. delivered into the new 2023 E Class, including the Android app access and the selfie camera.
Geely NEV Strategy Event - Feb. 23rd
We already talked extensively on Geely in our edito last week: a sprawling group, built around a core, Geely Auto, and an ecosystem (notably its European brands like Volvo), and continuously building synergies between its activities, including its bets. And once again, this event was the opportunity to illustrate this all. The main lessons?
And last but not least, an impressive pace of development: seven vehicles will be commercialized within the next two years, the first one, the Galaxy L7 PHEV SUV, being already available from Q2 2023, at a starting price of $30k. Phew!
News of the week
领英推荐
???Micromobility & Transit
Lime announced this week it was finally harvesting some juicy profits, making all its competitors drooling. Indeed, it is a first hence a major milestone for Lime and more broadly for the whole industry which witnessed several waves of layoffs last year. With their losses mixed with a harder access to capital, it led them to exit markets and start some savings plans. Almost a cheeky success for Lime, quoting both scale and in-house scooter development as reasons of their success, while its competitors were reducing their global footprint and Bird stopping its own scooter design as a way to save money.
Let’s continue in the series “Lime succeed where others don’t”, this time in San Francisco, were Bird has announced its exit, following criticism around the city regulation. $1.1M for Bird, $1.2M for both Bay Wheels and Lime, and $805k for Spin. That’s not their yearly profits in SF, but the amount of fines each company has collected since November 2019 according to San Francisco Chronicle. And when Bird exits and Spin says it wants to work with the municipality on this matter, well, Lime is saying it’s all good for him, both on a regulatory and a financial standpoint.
A week after the historical decision of banning ICE cars by 2035 in the European Union, the European Parliament continues to push onto the throttle regarding sustainable mobility, and adopted a resolution on developing a EU cycling strategy. The resolution lays down 17 points in order to encourage bike use, develop its infrastructures (doubling them actually) and strengthen the industry on the old continent. Enough to confirm that bike is no longer considered a simple leisure, but a sustainable mean of transportation.
???Automotive & Manufacturing
We talked about it in our edito on February 6th, EV-manufacturers are in for a pricing death match initiated by Tesla in late 2022 early 2023. Enough to triggers multiple price readjustments in China, but the legacies seemed not impressed elsewhere. For German premium brands, it is just a show of their utmost confidence in themselves, and the conviction that the main preys are mainstream manufacturers. But Renault Group’s CEO, Luca de Meo is cool as a cucumber, and thinks, as reported by Matthias Schmidt , that Tesla has entered an “old-school loop” where price decreases are used to regulate over-capacity and cut down the inventory before going back to normal.
Speaking of Tesla, the manufacturer inaugurated yesterday its new Engineering HQ at Palo Alto, on the previous HQ of one of the “founding” companies of the Silicon Valley, Hewlett Packard. On a quick speech broadcasted live on Tesla’s Twitter page (where else), Elon Musk reminded of how much of a footprint the company has developed in its home state of California, being the top automotive employer in the state, and thanked its teams for the trip so far. No big announcement, except for the fact that the CyberTruck still seems to be expected for the end of 2023.
Like a phoenix, Lightyear seems to be coming back! The Dutch solar-EV start-up, which declared bankruptcy a few weeks ago, raised 8M€ for its reboot lately. Enough to create a new company, transfer the patents to it, and reboot the Lightyear 2 production. But new funds will be required soon. Meanwhile in the EV start-up world: US-based Faraday Future announced it would start production of its “FF 91 Futurist” by March 30th, with the first deliveries by the end of April. For Lucid Motors, it’s still a bit complicated on the production lines as its production forecasts (approx. +50%: from 7k in 2022 to 10-14k vehicles in 2023) remains below those from analysts (21k).
The geopolitical tensions around EV batteries won’t ease soon: after Ford-CATL deal tensions between China and the US, as media outlets report that the Chinese battery leader (37% market share) has been offering rebates to its largest customers. With a twist though: those deals seems targeted for Chinese manufacturers. Meanwhile in France, the fourth class of French Tech’s Next40/120, the government’s start-up support program, has been released: French battery manufacturer Verkor , backed by Renault Group, has been selected alongside other mobility companies such as BlablaCar, Virtuo, at-home charging start-up Zeplug or also EV fast charging network Electra .
???AV
C-V2X experimentations continue in China, with the Anhui Province launching a 15-km round-trip public autonomous driving bus route in Hefei, benefiting from the 5G+C-V2X network project in place. Up to 10 passengers will be able to cruise at an average 30 km/h speed to navigate between 6 stations in trips booked through a mobile app.
A new milestone to end this week’s newsletter: Cruise announced on Twitter it has now reached 1M miles in 15 months of operation!
Next week's event planning
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