Latest / Autonomy Insiders / Europe’s Own Path to Autonomous Mobility | Lukas Neckermann
Transcript
- Daniel Abreu Marques: Welcome to Autonomy Insiders, the show where global industry leaders in autonomous driving unpack their real-world insights. Lukas Neckermann: I believe firmly that we have Structural advantages in this autonomous race. our starting point is a very different one in Europe. a completely different structure to our cities and our modal share is quite different. Europe's path in terms of autonomous mobility is an extension of public transport, an additional mode. it augments the the whole mobility mix and it'll be authorized under a single type approval framework. Daniel Abreu Marques: Welcome back to Autonomy Insiders. I'm your host, Daniel, and every few months some publish the same verdict on Europe and autonomous driving. And one camp says Europe is hopelessly behind. The other says Europe should skip this race altogether. And my guests today think both camps are wrong. So in January he wrote that Europe is taking its own path in autonomous mobility and that Europe is also succeeding. So behind the claims sits a harder question, if the software that drives the car comes from California, from China, from Israel, so what actually stays in Europe? So who earns the money, who employs the people, and who owns the fleets? So Lukas Neckermann has been thinking about this longer than most. And more than 10 years ago, he coined the term mobility revolution, built on three zeros, zero emissions, zero accidents, and zero ownership. And he started his career at BMW and Allianz Group. He has written four books on mobility and cities, and he has lectured at the NYU and the University of St. Gallen. He co-founded Pave Europe, where he sits also on the board and also the Urban Places Lab, and he runs Neckermann Strategic Advisory in London. And today we cover Europe's own path, where the value in this industry really sits, a stress test of some of his own arguments and what he got right and wrong over the last ten years. So Lukas, welcome to Autonomy Insiders. I'm so happy to have you on the show today. Lukas Neckermann: It's great to be here, Daniel. Daniel Abreu Marques: So Lukas, let's start with the debate you joined in January. you answered a piece in the Financial Times which argued that Europe doesn't need driverless cars. And you wrote that both sides are wrong. So those who say Europe is hopelessly behind and those who say Europe should sit this race out. So what makes you so convinced that Europe can take its own path? Lukas Neckermann: First of all, the Genesis story of my counterpoint to that, it was basically in the same week that there were these two notions, one that we're not going fast enough and the other saying, well, why bother at all? And both of them came from the other side of the Atlantic. And You know, there's a German saying that you should sweep before in front of your own door before you comment on the dirt in front of someone else's, and it's a little bit like that. I genuinely feel that Europe and I'm in spite of my accent, I'm a German and I'm British. I picked up my accent during my studies in the US. but I'm a European and I believe firmly that we have Structural advantages in this autonomous race. So let's kind of talk through those a little bit. We've moved towards lower emissions, high quality of life in cities, and data privacy is of course a huge topic in Europe as well. So whereas, in the US, you have A bit of a hot mess in terms of transport. We have Modal Share where I live, for example, in London, about a third is active transport, a third is public transport, and only a third of thereabouts is is the car. That's our starting point. versus the US, where robotaxis fill a gaping hole because alternatives are simply missing. And that's fine. And it's good that they're filling that hole. They are You know, creating new mobility opportunities. But our starting point is a very different one in Europe. a completely different structure to our cities and our modal share is quite different. Now let's talk about road safety. From a road safety perspective, I mean it it doesn't compare. And I I need you and all of the listeners to remember this, especially when we hear statistics on how much safer autonomous vehicles are. I got into the autonomous business because I firmly believe that autonomous vehicles will be safer. And they will be. But our starting points are different between the US and Europe. The number of crashes per vehicle mile driven in the US is three to five times higher than we have in the UK or most of the rest of Europe. And not to mention the fatalities on the streets, which are dramatically higher in the US. so again, we have prioritized road safety to a much, much different degree in Europe. So the argument kind of falls flat to a certain extent when you already have cities in Europe which have zero road fatalities in a given year. Oslo, Helsinki, these are big cities, zero road fatalities. So it makes the argument for autonomous a really difficult one. And then there's a another aspect which is only really just emerging, and that's data privacy or data security. In the US now, there's a current discussion on cameras, roadside cameras. Company called Flock, but there are others as well, that are not necessarily controlled in terms of how they're being deployed. We're familiar with CCTV, certainly in the UK, but we're we also know that that data is very, very, very strictly regulated. That our privacy as individuals is protected at all times, and that the data is not leaked or or used in quite the same way. And when we think about autonomous mobility, we're talking about vehicles that have quite a lot of cameras as well. So I think that in itself is a debate and a discussion that we still have to have, and that the US will find as a hurdle to further deployment to autonomous. So I think our starting points between Europe and the US, and frankly also China, are very different. Europe's path in terms of autonomous mobility is an extension of public transport, an additional mode. it augments the the whole mobility mix and it'll be authorized under a single type approval framework. America's Path sees autonomous mobility as a substitute for public transport because it was never really built. Now we could certainly make the case, maybe take the investment and build public transport, but in a lot of places in the US, there's very, very little public appetite for that. And in China, on the other hand, autonomous vehicles I mean this is industrial policy more than anything else. Of course it serves a need in very, very dense large cities. But also the infrastructure and also frankly the the demographics are very, very different. So what's really important to note is the starting point that we have is so completely different that we can't compare. And that I'm frankly hesitant and very reluctant to let somebody else from any other region in the world tell us in Europe what we should be doing with regards to automated mobility. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah, that makes sense. And one of your main arguments is regulation. And you wrote that the US is working with a patchwork of cities or state also self-regulation, while Europe already has a framework for type approval as you just mentioned. And some countries are preparing even for cross border operations. So we could say the rules are in place, the vehicles mostly aren't. And you said yourself in May that there are only a few thousand autonomous vehicles on the road worldwide. So when does a lead in this regulation that we have turn into a lead also in the Lukas Neckermann: Yeah. So at the last autonomy summit in London, I suggested to participants learn to love regulation because it's not a bad word. It's a real enabler. In Europe it certainly is. regulation is our head start, it's not the finish line. once a vehicle is type approved, it can operate across twenty-seven markets. If you take a look at the service areas of the vehicles in the US at the moment, and you Put all of those together, that area is about twice the size of London. And each one of them has a different set of regulations because they're in different states, they're in different cities, they have certain special regulations because they're going to airports, they have different reporting requirements. and basically a permit for one doesn't imply permission in any of the other locations. It's very, very hard to build positive unit economics. when you have unique regulation across every single area where you deploy. And what we're creating in Europe is a harmonised framework. And I would say the UK, Germany and closely followed, I suppose, by by Switzerland, maybe France as well. Has a real, real advantage in terms of the framework that we've set for proving safety and enabling deployment. So when an operator comes into the UK or Germany, they know exactly what they need to do. And that deployment actually can be across a much, much larger area than just a fraction of one city in the US or in Germany or in the UK. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah, I think that's clearly an advantage when you exactly know what to do to deploy. And your answer to scale has been also partnerships. So you said public private partnership is the trend that will define the next five years because Europe has more pilots and more public money that than any other region. And some argue that it's also the problem. So at an an VDIK event this summer, a speaker said that the EU has funded about eighty projects and Thirty eight still exist. And most stop skating the data funding ends. So why do pilots die in Europe, in your opinion? Lukas Neckermann: The first thing I would say is what's wrong with pilots. pilots per se aren't a problem. Pilots that you don't learn from and apply to new deployments, that is a problem. And I would really hope that we're learning along the way across all of the pilots that we've done. Yes. Pilots, many of which have been funded at the state or national or EU level, have stopped short after six months, twelve months, three, five, seven, ten vehicles driving short distances. and there's a lot of reasons those pilots stopped short. Some of it is because the vehicles weren't ready. I mean, these pilots go back 10 12, 14 years. I mean, you'll remember some of the vehicles that we were riding, and they were just not fit for purpose, to be fair. so now that we're in the next generation of vehicles, the next you know, autonomous driving stack, the pilots make more sense and we can actually get more scale out of these vehicles. Frankly speaking, in the US, what you have is extended and scaled pilots, because all of them still have In the US, of course, it's you know you can deploy in those defined areas, but you're regulated locally and you are self-certifying, self-regulating. and when something goes wrong, well then it's then it's on you. And self-regulation will only take you so far. just ask Boeing. The European case is prove the safety case first and pilots help with that. and then we can do large scale rollouts. And frankly those those take money. And that takes us, frankly, as well back to the unit economics argument, which we'll talk about a little bit later, I know. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah. So maybe let me take you to one city that you mentioned already. Let me take you to Oslo. because it's also an example you chose for your article. So Ruter wants to integrate up to thirty thousand shared autonomous vehicles into Oslo's public transport network, and you quoted their CEO saying their customer expect an end to end solution. So can then others copy that? Or is it more like a real Norwegian exception where you have a wealthy region with a transport authority that also owns the customer? Lukas Neckermann: Well, the key to that isn't necessarily Norway's wealth, although there's no doubt, of course, that it has some, but it's not unique. Munich, Hamburg, most Swiss cities all have similar levels of potential investment into this technology. the key to that particular one is A, the ambition, and B the customer relationship. So the ambition is there to use automated mobility to augment. public transport, to add, to serve underserved areas, especially outside of the city center, suburban areas, exurban areas where currently there is or it's not profitable, it's not sensible even to run a bus service. But yet the public transport authority and operator want to serve that population as well. And again, that applies to a number of different s large cities across Europe. The possibility to do that is also because the public transport authority and the operator have a very close link there. they're joined at the hip. That's not the case in all cities across Europe. So it's not a monolith in that sense. You have to actually look at the structure of how it works in each city. And the other thing I said was the customer access piece. Ruter of course, has an app that is used by a very large number of people already. And that's the case in a lot of European cities because, as I mentioned earlier, the modal share is so heavily skewed towards public transport. So most people already have the public transport app. So that's your access to mobility anyway. So if you're paying for public transport, if you're paying for bike sharing, scooter sharing via a public transport app, and SBB is quite similar in Switzerland, then it's just an extension of the full full suite of options. Daniel Abreu Marques: And Oslo really shows what Europe can do when a public transport authority takes the lead. but I now want to get to the question I hear more than any other in this industry whenever I talk about autonomous driving in Europe, I hear the same conclusion. So the value goes to America and China. But you don't buy that. So why not? And where exactly does the money stay in Europe and yeah, maybe also how big is that share compared to what goes to the software? Lukas Neckermann: So it's funny. When we talk about vehicles that are being deployed, we use the brand that has advertised it, that has announced it. So a lot of people will be talking about Uber or Waymo or maybe Lyft or maybe Bolt. and that's fine. But we need to take a look at what's behind that brand. Again, Waymoon Uber, they may dominate the headlines, but follow the money per vehicle kilometer driven, if you will, and you find financing, insurance, the depot, energy, cleaning, maintenance, operations, customer service, contracting, everything everything behind it is very, very physical and local. And here's where the branding ends. because even in the US, you may hear about a deployment from from one of those brands that I mentioned, but behind them sits fleet management from FlexDrive or Transdev or Moove And obviously the vehicles they're coming from Zeekr or Jaguar or maybe Volkswagen and Lucid as well. And even the customer service app is not consistent. So you've got Waymo, of course, experimenting on that, where in some cities they're available on Lyft, and other cities they're available on. In some other cities, they have their own app. And this is basically a period of trial. And that's why we really need to look behind the scenes on where value is being generated. And I think there's quite a lot of potential there. Remember. I mean Waymo again gets a lot of the headlines and rightfully so and we're very very grateful of course to the drive and ambition and the and what they bring to the ecosystem. But what's the endgame here? if we compare it to say Android, Alphabet makes really only a very, very, very small fraction of its revenue by licensing out the Android platform. in Europe it's about 30, 40 euros per device sold. The real value then is generated in value added services. In the context of Robotaxis, that may be or it's most likely selling advertising eyeball time from the person in the back seat or to the person in the back seat. that could very well be an additional value that's being generated. But For the operations itself, it's really about hardware and moving things in the physical layer much more than the software. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah, and you mentioned something similar also in another podcast. you told the industry to focus on the boring problems and you listed there the orchestration, maintenance, fleet efficiency, charging cleaning, parking and all the other stuff. So if you had to pick one of those boring problems as the biggest profit pool, which one would you choose? And maybe also who in Europe is best placed to capture it today? Lukas Neckermann: So I'll pick two topics that we really should be highlighting more of. One is the whole fleet orchestration, because this whole business model Will succeed only if the vehicles are utilized to the highest degree possible, that they're repositioned, charged, scheduled, that depots are available and the utilization of the vehicles are are maximized. There's a few companies that do that. One that I work with is a company called Odyssey. They actually do it on behalf of one of the deployments here. in London. and that is going to really be the difference between making operations on a unit economics basis be profitable or fail. The second one, and it doesn't get mentioned enough, is insurance. Insurance is something that's terribly boring. Yet not a single vehicle can move without it. and five, maybe ten percent of the revenue is going to go to insurance. And I can guarantee you that that's always going to be a profitable part of the business model. so there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. and we really need to focus on the boring stuff because the boring stuff is what's going to make the profit. And you go back to the old, you know, gold digger adage there, you know, it's not the people who find the gold, it's the people who sell the picks and the shovels. And it's very much the same thing here. Daniel Abreu Marques: Super interesting. And in the same post you wrote that vertical integration isn't happening to the degree it's being presented. And it doesn't make sense because expert will always be better. There are some counter examples, I would say. For example, Waymo in some markets they control the software, the operations, the app, and some not. As you mentioned, we they have partners like Moove and so on. But it's the largest robotaxi operator in the world, in some markets, vertically integrated. Then you have also Tesla which is going in the same way. But what would you say? Why are they wrong? Or do you think Europe is just simply also a a play with different rules? Lukas Neckermann: I think certainly Waymo, of course, like everyone else, will depend very, very heavily on those who have made it their USP to deliver on the back end. and they already do rely on those partners. I wouldn't say that they're vertically in integrated by any stretch, in fact. if you consider the revenue of the entire stack, the customer layer is going to get maybe ten, ten percent. the tech stack is gonna get about twenty, twenty five, thirty percent of the revenue. the manufacturer is gonna get twenty five to thirty percent and the fleet management is gonna get about forty percent. So so even right now the parts that Waymo does control are max a third of the revenue of robotaxis anyway. And there are other business models as well, and there's other vehicle types and and logistics and things that we can talk about. But For passenger transport, that's kind of the revenue split. And all of that falls by the wayside if you have to pay DoorDash to close the doors for you on a vehicle. Obviously, that's not happening anymore with the with the New Zeekr vehicles. But I mean to say the vertical integration can't happen and it shouldn't happen, because there are people who are just better suited to do some parts of that. Waymo has no interest in getting into a business line with eBIT margins of six, seven, eight percent. And that's what we're talking about in a manufacturer. That's what we're talking about, frankly, also the customer layer. you know, that's the EBIT margin that Uber has for ride hailing. And certainly not in fleet management, where the EBIT margins are also quite they're healthy. But they're nothing close to what a software company is used to. So why would a software company vertically integrate if you're getting into a business line that just doesn't have the level of profitability that that you're used to and that more importantly your shareholders are used to? Daniel Abreu Marques: Absolutely and Lukas Neckermann: Speaking of shareholders, you did mention Tesla. honestly, in terms of their robotaxi proposition, it's not something we need to worry a lot about in Europe. Even Elon confirms that it's at best a very, very faint future, future vision, at least based on the platform and the hardware that they have right now. Daniel Abreu Marques: Absolutely. They're busy getting their level two system approved here in Europe before they do anything in level four. You said something to Forbes last year also that stuck with me. So that all the work an Uber driver does, like cleaning, charging, registering the car, fleet management, so all also all the stuff that we talked about, it doesn't go away. So it goes somewhere else. And you also pointed out that the early robotaxi deployment had as many people behind the scenes as they would had drivers. So can you give us a guess or Yeah, a number so where does that ratio stand today and also maybe at what number of people per vehicle does a robotaxi fleet in Europe actually make money? Lukas Neckermann: So this is a number that's banded about quite a lot because there are suggestions that some of the operators have a 1 to 10 ratio, a 1 to 20 ratio, 1 to 25 ratio of monitors to vehicles. Now, monitors is just one small part of the puzzle. Remember, if your starting point is ride hailing. where you have a lot of unpaid activities being done by drivers. again, somebody has to do it. So ride hailing is you know a very difficult way to make a living. And that's because you're only making the revenue When you're actually driving with a passenger, but you're spending a lot of time cleaning your vehicle, charging your vehicle, fixing your vehicle, changing the tires, all of those different things that are not in any way supported, but that need to happen. So while the focus is on monitoring vehicles, and sure, we'll get to the point where you have one person in a big room with lots of screens in front of them and managing 20 vehicles, as soon as that vehicle hits the depot, that vehicle has to go through the physical transformation to be able to go on its next trips. And that is where the unit economics really, really hurt. there's a real need for that optimization and the orchestration and we talked about the or orchestration piece earlier making sure the right vehicle is in the right place at the right time Again, what Odyssey does and others also do, because you need the higher revenue per vehicle mile. Right now, we're not even close. if you take a look at the the published numbers anyway, we're so far away from what you and I see on LinkedIn people posting, hey, my Robotaxi ride only cost me so and so much. That's very similar to what I pay in ride hailing. This is a great business model. again, those are plain numbers right now because the United Economics at the moment don't stack up at the level of scale that we have. And that's why of course scaling is important. Daniel Abreu Marques: Absolutely. And I think one more piece of the value chain that not enough people talk about is also who owns the car at the end. And Lukas Neckermann: Mm-hmm. Daniel Abreu Marques: you've asked whether banks, leasing companies or private equity will own and run these fleet, and you also work with financial services so they they know what they're financing. So what does a European bank or lessor need to see before it finances, let's say, one thousand robotaxis? And who do you expect to make the First move. Lukas Neckermann: So, first of all, why they're the ideal candidate? Because their cost of capital is lower than anyone else. So if any other company in this stack is paying interest rate or LIBOR plus two, plus three, plus four percent or something like that, you have a bank that basically has a much lower cost of capital. That makes them very well suited to be the owner. Now what Will get them into the game when they frankly, when the business is big enough and they understand the business model. they are at the moment not particularly moved to get off the sidelines because 6,000, 8,000, 10,000, 20,000 vehicles is not yet a game changer for them. They have individual fleets which are larger than that. And the biggest leasing companies have. a million, two million, two and a half million vehicles. So even the most innovative in the business, and I'll and I'll note you know, someone like a Holman or an enterprise, they they'll get off the sideline when when when the volume is there. for right now, there's still a lot of uncertainty because of residual values. Yeah. We're Also creating a business here with custom-built vehicles, which I endorse. I think this is fantastic. I love the vehicles being designed for ride hailing, for ride pooling, for maybe shuttles and all of this. But we don't have a clear picture of what the residual value of those vehicles is going to look like. We don't have utilization history. We don't know what the liability and the insurance structures are behind those types of vehicles. And until we do. right now the assumption has to be that those vehicles, after a certain period of time, they're a write-off. And if they're a write-off, that makes them very, very expensive for a bank PE or for a lessor And that's why I'm very, very certain when the volume is there and when we have a little bit more data on whether these vehicles will actually have a second life after their robotaxi, roboshuttle life, then we'll see the big eyes getting into this just because again their their costs are lower than anyone else. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah, totally agree. And I think also this is a huge part of why you now see companies like Uber or also Bolt making this huge announcement with like thirty five thousand robotaxis on their balance sheet. So just to get the ball rolling to make the case or to demonstrate that it works and then other one can step in. Lukas Neckermann: Absolutely. Kudos kudos to our good friends at those companies to be thinking big to really be positioning where the industry is going to be at, when the type approval comes, when we can get those vehicles on the streets, not in you know the thousands, but in the tens of thousands and in the six figure level, because that's what's going to bring everybody else into into the mix. Daniel Abreu Marques: So maybe now let's go from the value chain also to the map. So because where these vehicles drive also decides who they actually serve. And in one of your articles, you also quote the Ruter CEO saying sustainable mobility for everyone. And everyone also includes the suburbs and also the outer districts. And I think that's also the core mission of public transport. But commercial robotaxi operators go where the money is. So city centers and airports outer districts with low density, also long empty trips back, is maybe not a good route for ride-hailing business. So what's your take? Will commercial operator ever serve those areas without being paid to do it? Lukas Neckermann: Daniel, you're absolutely spot on to raise that topic and that and that potential risk, to be fair. And this is where regulation comes in. This is where the public transport authorities, the public transport operators, can work together with the cities to decide. And it certainly will be the case in Europe that they will decide this is where you can operate or this is where you should operate. And and we see a lot of learnings from the deployment of yet another mode of mobility, micromobility, scooters and e-bikes. Cities have learned their lesson from the deployment of these new modes, and they'll apply those learnings to the deployment of autonomous. Now to a certain degree, you know the robotaxi just replaces ride hailing and it's up to them, the regulator, to decide how do we deploy so that it actually serves new populations. And there are precedents for that. When Uber launched in London, it genuinely did fill gaps where black cabs didn't serve customers in the outskirts of London. And some of that is just sim simply volume. We have fifteen or twenty thousand black cabs and we have about a hundred thousand private hire vehicles or ride hailing vehicles. So so there's just a greater density and a greater availability of ride hail vehicles in London. so there's obviously quite a few who are gonna go outside of the core and central business areas. And frankly, it's not it's not the fastest way to get around anyway. so they they're gonna go to where it makes sense to drive. If you're in central London walking, biking, public transport is without a doubt always the fastest way to get around. so the appeal to be sitting in traffic in a in a single occupancy or a dual occupancy vehicle is not really that high. And it'll be that way in other dense large cities and again those cities will regulate for it from the lessons that they learned in micromobility. so it there is the potential for this to come in as a new mode to augment public transport and there will be regulatory nudges to make sure that it happens that way. Daniel Abreu Marques: Do you think this will will come in kind of an obligation? So that they need to serve the outer skirts, otherwise they cannot deploy in the city center, something like that. Lukas Neckermann: Obligation is a strong word, but there will be mechanisms that cities will use to make sure that robotaxis are serving the population in the best way possible. And again, we shouldn't just focus too much on robotaxis, because in Europe again we have this other this other vehicle type. We have really everything between small, medium, large, extra large we have we have in the mix. So So there's still you know the the the prospective shuttles and up to and including small buses that will be automated, that will be able to serve current mobility deserts, underserved areas in the outskirts of a lot of cities, yeah. Daniel Abreu Marques: So you wrote that around four hundred cities and also municipalities in Europe already run on demand ride pooling, mostly connecting all the outer areas and mobility desert as you call it to the to the main lines, and that most rides carry only one or two passengers. And I think in those services the drivers, the biggest cost and in many regions there are not even enough bus drivers, so you also have a huge driver shortage in Europe and also in other regions. So does autonomy finally make the outskirts Affordable to serve well. Lukas Neckermann: So you are describing a problem and a solution at the same time, indeed. The four hundred or so ride pooling services that are generally supplied by public transport operators and I know Lukas Fullianti does a great overview of those every year. those are in almost all cases heavily subsidized models that Have occupancy rates per vehicle occupancy rates of under two. So we as an industry need to really be honest with ourselves that ride pooling and ride hailing are effectively the same thing. The vehicle types might change and the operator is a different one. One is a commercial, one is a public service. but at the end of the day, we're bringing people at the outskirts generally towards public transport hubs. and doing so as a feeder service really. It really depends on the commitment that the public transport operator has, and we mentioned Oslo earlier, to serving those mobility deserts and frankly also the financing that they have to do so. if they do, and if they are firmly committed, perhaps even if their if their license requires it, they will provide those services and they are actually helped, and this is where it becomes a real benefit to take out the driver. once the unit economics are are are more favorable, that these services can operate without a driver and thereby again serve mobility deserts. I do think that the greatest use case in Europe will not be in the city centers, but will be on the outskirts and bringing people to the public transport network and the trunk lines. Daniel Abreu Marques: Makes sense and maybe now let's look ahead because I think you watched this industry for a very long time. So I want your view on where Europe goes from here. So picture Europe three years from now. Which use cases scale first in your opinion? Is it a robotoxi in the big city or is it these shuttles inside public transport as you mentioned, or maybe even logistics and freight? So what do you think? Lukas Neckermann: Well, first of all, let's talk about automation more generally speaking, and we can compare this in a certain degree to electrification. Almost a quarter of new vehicles sold are now fully electric, a third of new bikes sold are electric. Actually in Germany it's twice that it's almost two thirds of new bikes sold are electric. over half of the buses are fully electric. so we've managed to electrify various parts of the mobility chain. And the next thing is to just automate various parts of the mobility puzzle. And again, that goes across all modes, whether that's taxis and ride hailing or shuttles or buses up to and including well the trains are very heavily electric anyway but also on the logistics side and that just like the electrification did will create impacts on infrastructure it will create ripples along so many more business models, including, I don't know, restaurants on the side of highways. It will include, you know, the notion of wireless charging in order to bring down depot and charging costs. It will integrate so many other business lines and businesses in its wake. so the impact we're only beginning to see it. more specifically, where will we see it? Well, on robotaxis specifically, and I mentioned most drivers are actually quite poorly paid. we will see robotaxis in the next three to five years. There will be some accretive effect, there will be some additional needs being served, but they will also replace existing ride hailing to a certain degree. and I mentioned the number in London that we have about a hundred thousand. If we have three thousand, five thousand, ten thousand of those becoming Robotaxi that's objectively a decent number. But in the grand scheme of things, it's a proportion of the vehicles that we already have on the street. And our job is to make sure that they are orchestrated in such a way that they are doing less empty miles, and are actually beneficial in terms of all of the things that a city wants them to do lower emissions, higher quality of life, greater accessibility, greater road safety. The other Daniel Abreu Marques: And if Lukas Neckermann: question is around what are we trying to achieve? Technology itself isn't the end goal. And that's what I was trying to get to just now. Cities want this to be deployed for that accessibility, emissions reduction, greater safety, all of these wonderful social benefits that they bring. And only when the technology is actually serving that goal will we actually see mass scale deployments. Daniel Abreu Marques: And if you look to let's say 2030 will Europe have its own driving system running at scale? So from a company like Wayve or maybe even from one of our famous automakers here, or is that a race that is over in your opinion and Europe's real strength will be everything around the software that we just covered? Lukas Neckermann: Well I'm of course based in London, so I'm very partial to our hometown hero. Wayve has lots of great partnerships and and has enormous potential to be one of the if not the key player in this space. they are focused very, very heavily on having the partnerships with OEMs, including European OEMs as we well know now with new partnerships with european players being announced almost weekly at this point. so I do think that we have a lot of potential on the tech side from someone like Wayve. There are plenty of other stacks that are being developed and not quite of the same scale. It's worth mentioning someone like the motor AI. But a reminder here That so much of the value will be created between the customer and the tech stack. And that's always going to be a local activity because it is, well, geographically bound. So as long as that's the case, there'll be plenty of value that's being generated for European companies in this game. Daniel Abreu Marques: later this month you will open the Madrid Autonomous Mobility Summit with a keynote on the global race for autonomous driving. And you wrote that 2026 is shaping up as the year autonomy moves from the pilots that we mentioned to a market here in Europe. And let's hold you to that. So in a good way. So it's Lukas Neckermann: Ha ha. Daniel Abreu Marques: October 2027, and we record this show again. So what has to be true in Europe for you to say I was right. Lukas Neckermann: I don't want us to be measured by having the most robotaxis in operation. I want us to be measured by how have we created the platform, the basis for success in Europe. And it goes back to a lot of the things that I mentioned earlier. And in fact, regulation is part of that basis. Having type approved homologated vehicles that are available. because vehicles, frankly, right now are a bit of a bottleneck in this in this whole whole picture. There aren't that many vehicles that are available. So we will have created that platform in Europe. We will have by the end of 2027, by current planning in all likelihood the first type approved vehicles, we will certainly have services. There will be several thousand passenger carrying vehicles in various cities. We will have proper competition, which no other region can say, because we have invited to Europe the best from North America and the best from Asia, and have our own competitors as well. So we have all of the bits and pieces plus the regulatory and structural framework to make Europe be a highly competitive environment for automated passenger mobility. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah. Super fascinating what's coming up in the the next few months and years and we're at the end now, but I just wanted to give you the opportunity also to share a bit more when do you speak? When can people meet you and where can they meet you Lukas Neckermann: A few things that I'll plug. I'll certainly encourage anyone who's listening and who is in the ecosystem, if you aren't already, to become a member of PAVE Europe, the Partners for Automated Vehicle Education for Europe. If you are interested in the interaction between cities and automated passenger transport, I would encourage you to reach out to me and the Urban Places Lab. This is a topic that we spend quite a lot of time on. And in terms of places where you'll see me next, certainly you mentioned the Madrid Autonomous Summit. you might also see me doing a keynote at the Tomorrow Mobility World Summit in Barcelona. And of course, Daniel, you and I are working together on the Autonomy Summit in London in March 2027 So I expect to see really everyone from our ecosystem showing up and having fantastic discussions here in London. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah, already looking forward to it. So Lukas, thank you so much for taking the time today. It's was a really insightful conversation and yeah. Hope to see you soon and keep up the good work. Lukas Neckermann: Thank you, Daniel. And you too. Great work, great podcast. I love hearing every episode. Daniel Abreu Marques: Thank you so much. Bye.