The Week in Mobility — 19 March 2021

2031

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to visit a new decade each week, starting with 2031.

The year is 2031 and amazingly WeWork is booming. Ten years on from the coronavirus pandemic and the majority of companies have elected for a working from home hybrid — spending roughly 2 days in the office and 3 days remotely. Given this switch, many former office buildings have either been given over to WeWork and its competitors, or converted into flats. Unsurprisingly, these flats are all kitted out with two tiny studies and the furnished ones come with exercise bikes as standard. There is still a great deal of scepticism surrounding group exercise classes with Bikram yoga being the most notable casualty.

London feels young — dominated by the under 30s craving the city experience their millennial counterparts took for granted. It’s been a year since London officially banned ICE vehicles, but given that most people don’t own a car and most buses and delivery vehicles were electric anyway, the event passed without much ceremony. Arguably legalising scooters in 2025 was much more momentous and now most roads have scooter and cycle lanes. Those that still have a petrol or diesel car tend only to drive at night to avoid being judged or else will justify their polluting antics by boasting an entirely ethically sourced carbon neutral wardrobe.

Over the past ten years, many young families have continued to flee the city, ditching their one bedroom flats for a garden and the possibility of a spareroom. The exodus has transformed highstreets which are now bustling hubs of small co-working spaces, coffee shops, VR centres, pavement parks, music venues, pop-up businesses and kitchens. However, retail is practically non-existent with most independent shops opting to move online or to bigger city locations. Amazon has become increasingly localised with many towns having a warehouse ready to autonomously deliver to doorsteps via a drone — banishing hardware stores to the realm of nostalgia.

Around a third of private vehicles outside of cities are electric and concerns about the availability of charging stations still continues. Some petrol stations have turned into charging hubs, but there’s often a queue and the electricity rates vary greatly depending on the weather and the time of day. However second life van and bus batteries are becoming more widely available, which should stabilise prices both at home and at stations. Some electricity providers have even bought some of the incumbent OEMs. Bus networks have dramatically improved and many villages are now boasting a network of on demand small buses. Some are autonomous, but if they are, they operate only in private vehicle free areas.

The impact of differences in education received during the Covid lockdown continue to prevail. Some students are allowed to carry on with their secondary school education into their early 20s. Bizarrely schools have received a lot of funding from the children themselves who are allowed to spend a day a week honing their entrepreneurial skills. This movement was kicked off following the Roblox phenomenon in the 2020s. Given that children are contributing to the economy from a young age and working from home practises have resulted in greater productivity, it is rumoured that the four day working week will soon come into effect.

Canada, Australia and Nigeria are now home to some of the biggest gigafactories on the planet controlling 80% of the Cobalt market. Climate, water and Cobalt politics dominate the headlines and it is unclear how mining minerals in Space will change things.

Pick of the gossip headlines: Real Beef is Banned in Restaurants. Zayn Malek Agreed to join OneDirection on their Comeback Tour. First Robot-Human Marriage.

Elsewhere in the industry

• Lordstown gets the Nikola treatment from Hindenburg Research — CarScoops
• Via acquires Remix to create end to end transit tech solutions — Via
• Canoo reveals its pickup truck — Canoo
• Tesla in talks with Tata to partner on charging infrastructure in India — electrek
• BYD presents bendy bus for Brazil — electrive
• Autonomous vehicle company, Voyage is acquired by Cruise — Voyage
• VW Power Day reveals the company’s ambitious roadmap to 2030 for batteries and charging — VW
• Hyundai reveals new details on the Staria — Hyundai
• The UK government cuts electric vehicle incentives — AutoCar
• Nissan is using second life Leaf batteries in AGVs — Nissan
• Lion Electric is building a battery assembly plant in Quebec — GreenCarCongress
• Proterra will power Lightning eMotors electric commercial transit van — Proterra
• The UK Government pledges £3bn for a national bus strategy including the promise of 4,000 British built electric and hydrogen buses — SmartTransport
• Oxford will have UK’s first Zero Emission Zone — BBC News
• Worthy of your time — this amazing article from the New York Times shows how transit has responded to the coronavirus pandemic

Miscellaneous

Earlier this week, a single JPEG by digital artist Beeple was sold for $69.3 million at an auction conducted by renowned auction house, Christie’s. The unnamed buyer is now owner of Beeple’s Everydays — The First 5,000 Days, 2021 a digital collage of every image the artist has posted online since 2007. The digital assets or Non-fungible Token (NFT) are the latest craze in the cryptosphere, reaching stratospheric prices. This week Elon Musk released a music video about NFT as an NFT. Unlike bitcoin, an NFT is unique, so trading NFTs is like trading different pokemon cards rather than exchanging cash for cash. However, as you can copy a digital file as many times as you want, including the art that’s included with an NFT — is this just another bubble waiting to burst or is this the digital equivalent of owning the Mona Lisa rather than a postcard of her?

Have a wonderful weekend!