Annual Mobility Study 2025: Recording (APAC)

Together with Vision Mobility and Curiosity Research.

It's great to see many of you online with us today.

Today, we've got two speakers, myself, Natasha Santha. I'm a partner with LEK Consulting, And I'm also joined by James Carter, who is the founder of Vision Mobility. Welcome, James.

Good to see you.

Good to see you again too.

I think, James, this has been this is, like, the fifth time or sixth time that we're doing this readout together. It's always good to share the screen with you.

Yes. Yes.

So this survey is is quite unique. It's, I'm not sure if it's the only one of its kind, but it is one of the longest longitudinal studies on mobility sentiment globally.

And this year, we surveyed over three thousand five hundred respondents in seven countries. And in total, it's been eighty thousand participants for the last nine years.

We did this survey right at the end of twenty twenty four.

So the data that you'll see labeled in all the graphs, throughout this is is labeled twenty twenty four, but the data is only about two years two months old.

Before we begin, I've just got a couple of housekeeping points about the webinar.

During the webinar, you can submit questions in written form through the platform, that'll be in the q and a function. And we'll answer as many as possible, in a bit of time that we've got allocated at the end for q and a. But there's also a chat function. So any reactions or thoughts you might have on the data being presented, please, put your responses in there, and and we can have a discussion as a group as we go through this.

Once some of the webinar has ended, you'll receive a recording in your inbox just a few minutes later, and we invite you to share that with, any of your colleagues that you think would benefit from from this insight.

If you'd like to hear about a particular topic as well in the future from from L. E. K. Or from Vision Mobility, please also submit your suggestions. We'd we'd love to hear them.

Now let's get on to the the agenda.

We're gonna cover four topics today. We're gonna explore whether the love affair of the with the personal car is going to continue.

We'll look at sentiment towards decarbonizing, electric vehicles and what's happening in the car market, and we'll look further forward to understand sentiment and perceptions around emerging modes.

And lastly, each year, we like to survey for attitudes around a current global issue. And this year, we're gonna explore the impact of recent geopolitical uncertainty.

Okay. Let's get started.

So diving into the to how sentiment is changing for the personal car.

There's a lot of commentary and reporting about declining car ownership.

People are talking about, you know, perhaps the growth in ride hailing, investments in PT, anti car measures, such as putting in bike lanes, taking away parking, you know, would result in a reduction in car ownership.

However, the data suggests, from the survey that the love affair with the personal car is far from being over. The graph on the right hand side of this page shows the percentage of respondents who want to own a car regardless of whether they need one or not.

The data shows both the US and Australia.

And in the US, over the last four years, car dependence, you can see from the graph, is actually growing. It's relatively unchanged in Australia, but what we do also see with another question we survey is that driving enjoyment has actually increased by five percent in Australia since twenty twenty two.

What's even more a little bit more, you know, thought provoking is that when you look at this sentiment going back over time now on the on this, the data here, we've got US data. It's a larger sample with a long time series. It's about thirty three thousand people that have, responded to this. Also highlights a benefit of a longitudinal survey. You can see the gray, at the top, of the chart here, shows that over time, what we see is that car dependence was on a declining trend until we sort of hit COVID, but now the trend has been reversed.

The Australian data is a little smaller than this sample, and it's a bit more choppy, but it doesn't show that much change over the time period. But certainly in the US, what we're seeing, is that COVID perhaps taught us just how important it was for us to have access to a mode of private transportation.

And it'll be interesting to see in the coming years whether we wind back to trend or whether we stay where we are.

We also see a relationship between working from home unwinding at an increasing preference to own a car. The data on this slide shows a snapshot of the number of days of working from home comparing twenty twenty one in the dark green versus twenty twenty four in the gray. And you can see this has increased across all jurisdictions.

And if you do look at the data in between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty four, you'll see it's actually a quite a steady a steady wind back.

So this could be correlated to car dependence as people return to work on-site more often. And typically, with more flexible timing than previously, they've sought comfort in cars that get them to and from work.

On the shift from working from home, if we dive into this data a little bit deeper and segment the workforce into those who are required to work on-site, which is on the left hand side fully, and those who can work from home at least one day a week, which is on right hand side of this chart. We can see that the shift in working from home is primarily driven from an increase in workers being required to be back fully on-site.

So the the graph that's on the left hand side shows the increase in fully on-site working. So it's no work from home days from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty four, and you can see this is now at around fifty percent of respondents.

And over the same time period on that right hand side, the graph shows how weekly work from home days have changed for those who have worked at least one day at home, and there's less change in those in this data. So for those who can work from home, sometimes the average days per week has decreased, but it's still broadly around that two to three days work from home. And so it indicates to us that within that headline number of days at home versus, days in the office, we can see the biggest shift is a proportion of works being asked to be back on-site full time.

The return to the office and the daily commute has likely played a role in the growing attention tools also purchase a car within the next year. So the data on on this slide, again, divided here by by country, shows how the enthusiasm for cars is translating into a growing intention to purchase a car in the next year. It compares twenty twenty two data with twenty twenty three data and the latest from twenty twenty four. And so you can see this growth across almost all countries indicating that respondents are on average expecting to buy a car sooner than they were last year.

Another topic of interest for us has been the extent to which people are willing to pay for upgrades once they have, you know, decide to purchase a new car such as, it might be self driving features or things like heated seats even.

And around half the respondents have told us, which is in in gray in this in this graph, that they're not interested in paying for upgrades on their car on a monthly subscription basis.

But it does depend on what the the upgrade is.

ADAS or in car entertainment connectivity are key items when people are willing to pay for, a subscription upgrade.

I'll just hand over to James for the next section.

Thank you, Natasha.

We're gonna move on now to environmental concern and, EV enthusiasm. And it's it's certainly very interesting what we're seeing right here now. So if we can just move on to the next slide.

So the first slide, what we're seeing here is that interest in environmentally transportation is not only remaining strong in twenty twenty four or late twenty twenty four when we did the survey. It's actually increasing in all countries except for Spain. So if you take a look at that, far right hand side, change in in the percentages, what you can see is all countries are increasing their interest in environmentally friendly transportation. And and really, from an attitudinal point of view, this aligns extremely well, with with growing EV sales, but also growing, hybrid sales as well. People are wanting to make a difference, and they're wanting to shift the way, from, internal combustion engines if they can.

Next slide.

And, really, this is part of a long term trend that's been growing year over year over year, and we started to see some really strong growth in this over, over COVID.

But as you can see, it's it's worth looking at Spain. Even though Spain came back a little bit, Spain also has by far the highest interest in of environmental interest of all the countries that we surveyed. And interestingly enough, Australia and the US are the lowest, and Canada too. So next slide.

Another thing we're seeing is that intent to purchase a battery electric vehicle, has increased compared to, last year. And most countries, except US, which is flat, and France and Australia, which have come back slightly, those countries that have come back slightly or stayed flat, we've seen an increase in hybrid. Now if you have a look at that bright green one at the top of the bars, that is hybrid. And I'll draw your attention to Australia, where it's gone from forty nine to to sixty percent in hybrid, actually, at a small cost of EV.

Also, that's the same case in the US as well.

What I think is is interesting though is that on the whole, we are seeing BEV interest continue to grow, and we will see this trend continue for, you know, we see think a significant amount of time. The other point I wanna make is that what we see is that battery electric vehicles, or the gateway to battery electric vehicles is always through hybrid. So once people spend time in a hybrid, then, it's very likely that they're gonna step into a a an EV at some point, in the future.

Next slide.

What's really important here is the EV landscape varies by region. And, what we see in North America is it's dominated by premium models, while Europe and Australia, because they have the Chinese vehicles, there is a a quite a difference in the way that the market is set up. If you have a look at, Canada and the US, both of those countries have one hundred percent tariffs on Chinese vehicles, and we don't see them we literally don't see any Chinese brands here. So they're just not part of the landscape. And in in fact, compared to Australia, North America's amount of brands and models is much smaller.

If you have a look at Australia there, you can see go back one. You can see that there's actually quite a lot of interest in in premium vehicles, around EV and less with, low and medium vehicles. But, you know, certainly, I would see as Chinese vehicles grab a bigger hold on the market, that will grow. The other interesting thing that we should know is, what you know, if if again, mentioning the amount of vehicles that and and then the amount of brands, that that are available, much greater in Europe and Australia.

Next slide.

So this this, slide here is where we have a look at what are the concerns of non BEV owning population.

And in what we see is that this is remaining unchanged and despite improvements in cost efficiency and infrastructure. So let's go through them. We see, firstly, we're gonna take cost.

There is still a concern, and in fact, that concern has gone up just slightly.

But if we look at what the underlying reality is, really, especially in Australia, we're seeing the price premiums actually reduced because of the Chinese entrance. Here in North America, we are not necessarily seeing that, and tariffs, as we'll talk about a bit later, will actually change this significantly, particularly for the US.

Let's go to range now. We're also in, seeing increases in range in e v BEVs, and this has been going up every year, but it still remains a concern.

The next one is public charging facilities.

And, again, we've seen a nineteen percent increase even though people's fears about the amount of charging out there has actually increased.

Battery replacement cost, another one that's jumped up in terms of, one of the the key, concerns of owning. But the reality is when you buy a new car, they have eight years, or a hundred thousand mile warranty, which is, over two hundred thousand kilometers. So, you know, it's different a different reality. Actually, it's a hundred and sixty thousand kilometres.

Next slide.

One of the key things that we looked at was what is the consumer willingness to buy Chinese EVs?

And then we also had to look at perceptions of luxury and quality. But if you have a look at obviously, in China, there's very high percentage of people willing to buy it. But this is particularly interesting because that ninety one percent that chose in China, if we wound back ten years or even just five years, that number would be much, much lower. The growth of interest in China for Chinese vehicles has grown dramatically.

Now also interesting is is having a look at, everyone else. And and in general, we are seeing around one third of the population would be interested in buying a Chinese vehicle. We, go from a low, of France of twenty eight up to a high of Spain of forty two, but everyone's in that range.

Around a bit more than a third of people would be interested. If we have a look at brand perception scores, it it's pretty much as you'd expect. The Germans remain out in front, in terms of brand perception of quality and luxury, while the Chinese remain down low.

That said, interestingly enough, they're not that much lower than traditional brands like Honda, Hyundai, Ford, Volkswagen, etcetera. So I think that's really key, and I would estimate or I would, I believe that we'll see BYD and other brands continue their, growth in terms of of of, perception of luxurious and high quality. Next slide.

So we took a look at, and the the Sankey chart describes, who's exporting and where are those cars going.

Now the one that's particularly interesting is China. Now most of the vehicles we've got here for China are going for the rest of the world.

And and you can see that, going down to the green there. However, we can also see, of course, over to Australia a little bit, over to, US, Canada, and others, but, you know, much smaller numbers.

The other one, that's worth looking at is Japan. Again, rest of the world, but, a big chunk going to to North America.

Now if we have a look at US down the bottom, basically, it's it really it it's roughly split halfway between Canada and rest of the world.

I wanna go back to these Chinese car exports. Where are they going?

Russia.

Russia is where they're going. There's a lot of them going there, and that's happened because the local market there got wiped out during the after the invasion of Ukraine, and the Chinese have said, yeah. We'll take that. Thank you very much, and started shipping their cars.

But we're also seeing, quite a few Chinese vehicles, go to Mexico, Europe, and and Australia, of course. Interestingly enough, they're going to the US as well. A lot of those vehicles now this was back in twenty twenty three. What happened in twenty twenty three is that we're seeing vehicles like Polestar two, and model three with the, LFP battery, becoming sourced out of there and going to both, Canada and, US.

Next slide.

So we're gonna have a look at from the other way, who's who's exporting.

Again, we're gonna gonna have a look at where Chinese vehicles are going and yep. There there are a lot of them are going everywhere. Now these are twenty twenty three numbers. If we have a look at twenty twenty four numbers, we'll see that you will see rapid growth in China and some contraction, of Japan in their exports.

So I think that's particularly important to take note.

Also interesting, Canada's exporting is going to a lot of it's going to straight to the US, with little bits and pieces, elsewhere.

Next slide.

Okay. I'm gonna hand it back to Natasha, who's gonna take us through, autonomous vehicles and eVTOLs.

Thanks, James.

So this year, we picked two emerging modes, to dive into a little bit further. We picked autonomous vehicles and eVTOL simply because we've just seen a lot of traction in these two, emerging modes over the last few years.

Last year, for example, Waymo's, autonomous vehicle drove, over forty million kilometres without human drivers. Joby's demonstrator aircraft flew fifteen hundred flights, doing nearly fifty thousand kilometres, including a successful eight hundred kilometer hydrogen flight over over California, which is, really exciting, especially for Australia. So the tick, it's nearly ready. Regulation will catch up. However, one of the really big unknowns is, you know, how the public will react. And so this section just focuses on, you know, what is that public sentiment towards these new and emerging modes.

So we've been, looking at interesting robo taxis and autonomous vehicles for the last, three years, and you can see the results of that time series here in in this graph. So the graph shows results for twenty twenty two in mid green, twenty twenty three in gray, twenty twenty four in dark green. And you can see there is this steady increase year on year, across all countries, but we're still at a very you know, we're still at a low base with an average of about thirty respondents saying, they are interested in the technology.

Now when we delve in a little bit further, and say, well, not just are you interested in this technology, but, would you consider using the technology?

What we see is that around twenty percent of respondents say they would do so without hesitation. That's in the the dark green, in this graph. The gray, would use a robotaxi service only if it is much cheaper than a traditional taxi service, which isn't which isn't here today yet.

But there are large proportion of the public, in in yellow in this graph, around forty five percent in Australia, that would never consider using an autonomous taxi service.

So how do we interpret this? Well, a competitively priced service, would be used by about half the population survey, which I think is is excellent for new technology. However, there still is a large proportion of the public that needs convincing.

So when we do ask respondents, well, why would you not use this mode? Most respondents are, unsurprisingly, they're concerned about safety. They don't trust the technology. And interestingly, a lot are concerned about the connectivity, which is, which I wasn't expecting to see, but that is a concern.

One hurdle for new modes and technologies is that it's really hard to, relate to something that you can't see or try. And so when we dive into the responses, it shows that respondents in jurisdictions that already have, a robo taxi presence are generally more optimistic and enthusiastic about autonomous vehicles for their transportation needs. So the graph shows the same breakdown as the previous graph. Dark green is I would, I would use an an an autonomous taxi, a robotaxi without hesitation.

Mid green is I would only use it if it was cheaper, and the grays, I would never use it. The bar on the left hand side is all of USA, and then the the bars on the right hand side are Arizona and California. And you can see they're the they're the states that have a really high robo taxi presence, and you can see that they've got a higher, level of acceptance.

However, it would be remiss to not talk about some of the the barriers and then ask your barriers to overcome, and this slide just lists some of those barriers.

We see capital requirements and governance being the greatest of these. But if we look at each of these in turn, look, the tech is continuing to improve, as we talked about way before, they're testing all over the US and have commercial services deployed, as is Baidu in China, and the testing is happening in, you know, various weather conditions and city layouts.

Capital requirements is really important.

There are, you know, potential requirements to make changes to road infrastructure, you know, potentially separating autonomous traffic from ordinary cards.

To fully capture the benefits autonomous driving, they can work with mixed in mixed conditions, but the full benefits requires, some separation, especially while we have a a mixed fleet, operating.

And then social acceptance as we talk about is is also really key. And space usage, and in this case, this is an opportunity rather than a barrier. So a shift to shared, autonomous vehicles would reduce the need for dedicated parking, both on and off on and off street. And then lastly, on the pages, is governance and and regulation. So we need to be thinking about, a whole new set of regulations, you know, who is liable for accidents, how will any transition period where AVs overlap with manual cars be taken care of, what about jaywalking, so there's quite a few things that still, need to be fully worked out.

Now onto EV tolls.

So EV tolls are electric powered takeoff and landing vehicles. You can see, some pictures on the slide of what they look like.

So when we ask the respondents, have you heard of EV tolls? Do you know what they are? What the graph shows is that about twenty to thirty percent, depending on the country, of the population actually aware of the technology, which is quite which is quite low. And you could say that the higher awareness, jurisdictions could be correlated to previous trials or press coverage, you know, Uber Air, who originally picked Melbourne to be a launch location.

They've been demonstrated flights in the US and in and in France who also show up higher here.

But what we found, as we delve deeper into the data is that knowledge is probably one of the key barriers for this mode. So the graph on the left hand side shows response to the question, would you use eVTOL technology?

Yes is in green and no is in gray. And for the purpose of our survey, we provided an understated description. We said, EV tolls are electric vertical take off and landing vehicles, and that they can transport you using sustainable energy by air at a at a low cost across medium distances.

We didn't talk about the cost in the future approximating that of a chauffeured car or the speed of travel, which is likely to be much faster than surface transport options.

But that left hand side, graph, it represents the whole population.

And it shows that, you know, once people know what it is, that forty percent would consider using the technology.

So for a group that was previously uninformed, that's a reasonably high response rate. It shows that there is underlying interest for this new mode.

The graph on the right hand side shows the results, to the same question, but only for the population who already knew about eVTOL. So the twenty twenty to thirty percent that we saw on the previous slide. So what you can see here is that the dark green, the interest is much higher at around sixty percent of that cohort.

So education is very important, for this mode.

So just asking those respondents, what do you value about this new mode?

This is probably not surprising, saving time, reducing congestion, reducing emissions.

And the concerns, again, not too surprising, safety, affordability, and interesting the lack of infrastructure, which, shows that people are thinking ahead about the infrastructure that's required. I think they realize it's, you know, it's hard to put down a vertical port in a in a busy city or regional town, which is where we where we need the most.

And lastly, you know, just looking at the market perspective, this is a, a graph which shows three of the major listed EV tolls and their their share price evolution.

Look, I think the market, you know, is still supportive of the technology. There's, you know, these three leaders, the market cap is around, around twenty billion or so US USD.

But you'd have to acknowledge it it's been volatile. Right? The share prices has been volatile. It's really very much tied to regulatory progress, and and broader industry sentiment, whether it be concerns about cash burn or failure of others in the sector.

And so it is it is really one to watch, and and we'll see when when we actually finally see commercial a commercial flight around this side of side of the world. Okay. Back to you, James, to the next section.

Thank you again, Natasha. We're gonna jump into this next section.

If you do have some thoughts, awesome questions, if you for us, please put it in the q and a. And if you've got something interesting to say in the chat, please jump over the chat and throw it in there. We've got a bunch of questions over there too. So, we're just gonna, jump into the impact of geopolitical uncertainty. And, really, this is what is on everyone's minds right now. And, really, these geopolitical developments are really impacting what our mobility looks like, whether that's through the the yeah. A net zero commitments that people that countries have been made, trade uncertainties, and, constraint around public, investment in in transportation infrastructure.

So we're gonna split this into into three, the net zero commitments and, EV transition, new tariffs and trade uncertainties, and the poor fiscal positions of governments and their low ability to invest in transport. So next slide.

So this really, is the one that's impacting me personally. I'm here in Canada. So this one is is really important to understand what's happening here and why, potential trade, barriers are are quite, quite the problem. Now I'm gonna run through from one to to five exactly what's happening.

But it's really important to understand here that free trade North American free trade, between the three countries has been around for forty years. And for US and Canada for cars, it's been more than sixty years. So what we've seen is incredible stability in terms of legislation so that international borders don't exist in terms of the supply chain. So let's start.

The first one is, powdered aluminium is sent from Tennessee, but we're actually gonna Rhineback. Where does that powdered aluminium come from? It's all comes from Quebec. And, of course, that bauxite has gotta come from somewhere too.

But all of the aluminum refining is is done in Quebec. It'll get that sent down to Tennessee. From there, it'll get sent to, Pennsylvania to be made into connecting rods in this in this example, for IC engines.

Then once they're cast, they get shipped up to Canada again, and those cast rods are then shaped and polished and machined, so that they're, you know, right to go in the engine. What happens then is they get shipped down to Mexico.

And in Mexico, the pistons, and and, the top, connecting ring gets added. And then it gets shipped back to number five for assembly into an engine. And, usually, engine plants are separate from, final assembly plants. So really, there's gonna be a number six on top, where that final assembly is is going to take place.

And that, frankly, could be Canada. It could be the US. It could be Mexico as well. So really, what we've seen is seven different steps, in in these just one part development.

And if you look right across all the different parts, then you see the same sorts of things happening here. So that's why putting in trade barriers, within North America has become just so problematic and caused just so many problems. In fact, it's such a problem, it's actually very difficult to put values on where how much added value you're adding in each part. So determining what the content from each country is is very, very difficult indeed.

So that's one thing to remember. I'm just gonna touch on what's happening in Canada right now. Canada has, seventy percent of its trade with the US back and forth.

And what that means is by Trump putting, high trade barriers in place in the form of tariffs, it's really causing not just uncertainty, but, frankly, fear in Canada of what's gonna happen to people's jobs, what's gonna happen to, you know, sales of those vehicles or sales these are the things we export, what's gonna happen to those imports when most of those things they're they're suddenly twenty five percent more because of reciprocal tariffs. So there's a a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of fear. There's it's it's a real issue right now.

We did see Liberation Day happening today or yesterday your time, which they're calling Liberation Day, but I think, Canada up here is calling termination tape. So it's it's, very problematic up here for us. Next slide.

So we've talked a bit bit about the trade uncertainties, the rising new car prices, affected.

But, of course, once new car prices go up, we're gonna see used car prices go up as we see reduced supply. People just can't afford new cars, so they're gonna drop back. We saw that happen in COVID as well.

Now the the other thing we just talked about too was, increase in manufacturing capacity across different geographies. But where that investment and when that investment happens is is going to be really people are just waiting for the dust to settle, before, anything happens. And and I think the problem with automotive is that, you have a long lead cycle of putting factories in from, you know, inception to final opening of door. You could be three, four, five years before all that comes together, and that's well past a Trump presidency.

The other thing, we should talk about too is because of this, continuation and perhaps turn right of politics in both US and Europe, we see reduced commitments to net zero and EV transition, which I believe is a shame.

I think one of those some of these things are are coming from different factors.

One of them is, you know, there there's been a little bit of a boom bust cycle with EVs, And, you know, I think that'll come through, in the long term. But, you know, as we struggle through that, we'll we'll get going. Frankly, Australia is one of the better countries in the world now to be selling EVs.

Certainly, North America is not quite expanding, as we as fast as as, we'd hope, certainly due to some of that uncertainty as well.

We also see, growing EV technology disparity between Western OEMs and Chinese rivals. We don't really see that here in North America because there are no Chinese vehicles here. But certainly in Australia, certainly in Europe, some of the technology that's coming through on the the Chinese vehicles, you know, just amazing. I I spent some time in Azika, just recently at CES, and it was a wow. It was incredible.

The other thing too we should be thinking about too is that governments are trying to figure out where they land financially in in in terms of their budgets. And, of course, public transportation is always expensive, particularly if you're doing things like digging subways and putting trains in. But also as well, it's it's also as well with EV charging as well. You know, what happens with that? What happens with the the rollout of EV charging infrastructure?

Next slide.

So this is, this we've come to the end here of, the, the presentation.

So we're gonna turn now to some q and a. Again, please, drop some questions in the q and a. And, you know, let us know what you're thinking. I I know we did see some, a couple of hands get put up. But, drop it in. Let us know what you're thinking. And, we'll go from there.

So, the first question is why no China or UAE? And I I know that there was some question about Vietnam and India.

I'm just gonna answer that real quick. We have done China and India in the past, but the data we got back from the two or three times we did it was just was not good. It it was not worth the time, and we we couldn't we couldn't make sense of of what was going on. Perhaps Natasha can elaborate on the on why we we decided to to discontinue the China and India data.

Yeah. I think it's it's it's almost just a a temporary decision.

What we wanna present to you what we present to you in these presentations is actually it's actually a subset of what comes back. We're really trying to mine the data and get the trends that we feel are reliable.

Of course, it is a survey, and and and you've got to remember the the size of the end, but we were getting results that that that we felt we couldn't rely on or put up, you know, put our brand behind.

But it it is, thank you for that question because it does it's a reminder, to us that people are interested in those markets and, perhaps something that we we should consider, in the future. Once we have once we get comfortable with the with the data that we're getting that we're getting back, if there's too much volatility or there's really big differences and we don't see a trend or relationship that we can see over those sort of you know, there's several years, we we actually don't we don't present it. There's actually lots that that comes back, and we are cherry picking. We're cherry picking.

And and, frankly, we best things.

We probably present ten percent of the data, I'd say, Natasha. It's Yeah. It's really, really deep. And, so we we wanna take those those top level trends.

Here's another one for you, Natasha. Any AI trends worth mentioning in what you're seeing in terms of automotive transportation?

I can think of some, but what are you thinking?

I mean, look. AI is a complete game changer, not just transportation, but, for multiple multiple industries. And it will certainly be, the foundation that lets us, accelerate or, you know, automation across our different transport modes. It also helps us to make better decisions across transport, you know, decisions about how we optimize things like traffic lights, signaling, how we make decisions about, fares and road user costs effectively, so access charges. So I think it is a I think it's a fundamental, you know, a game a game changer for how we we we think about making decisions about investment into into transport.

Mhmm.

And some of the things I'm seeing that OEMs can use it for is predicting supply and demand.

Certainly, one of the keys to profitability for OEMs is is making sure you have very accurate predictions on what actually happens. And, I personally think that we're a game changer for that. We've been seeing AI come in for a while in in the manufacturing facilities of, sorting data and predicting faults.

And so that's certainly been an interesting one.

There are a ton of other, things that we're seeing AI come through. Also, speech recognition, asking questions. I think Volkswagen has got chat chat GDP in their cars now, so quite interesting.

Alright.

We're gonna see so much data.

Sorry. Sorry. I was just gonna say we're gonna see so much data being thrown up to us from these transport vehicles and networks, and it's gonna be AI that helps us process all of that information and make sense of it to make better decisions. So it's a really exciting time actually for the the transport sector as a whole.

Question here. How much does Chinese supply chain control or limit, US EU automotive OEM's traction to be the growth?

Oh, there's a question.

What are your thoughts?

Look. I saw it. I'm not this is probably not an area that I, can probably talk about in in in great detail there, James.

I'll I'll I'll take it on then.

So, you know, I think one of the things that's been happening here is that that the Chinese have really developed their own internal, supply chains for vehicle manufacturer. But I think the big but here really is batteries because they they continue to control, both battery production and refining of battery, minerals that are going into it. Things like lithium, things like cobalt, they are very much in control of that. Certainly, in North America, under, under Biden administration in the same can Canadian governments, we've seen deep investment, into battery both battery building and, to find, minerals locally, source from friendly countries, and process the minerals here. So that establishment of the supply chain to really get passed, the Chinese almost stranglehold on this is is a really big topic.

And, hopefully, it it's a little bit difficult to see where the US is going right now, and, hopefully, that will will continue in the next four years.

Another question here.

And I what about digital earth as an an enabler? Nations are investing in advances in digital earth initiatives.

This embraces, technologies from AI rocketry to geospatial and digital engineering. Have you got any thoughts on that one? This is not one I'm I know a lot about.

And I'm guessing this is geo geospatial mapping that they're talking about.

Yeah. I think it that that is what the question is referring to. I mean, look, this, our ability to better able to understand location precisely is really important to enabling things like, you know, autonomous technologies especially. So, I can't say I'm a I'm a, a specialist in this topic, but I think this is this is a this is a key enabler for making this happen.

Yeah. And I think for autonomous too, this will be a this will be important as well, whether it's, you know, on a centimeter basis that that we see the, vehicles measuring with, say, lidar or, you know, whatever. The other thing that's interesting about, this is in cities, the idea of how we use the curb and when we use the curb. So, you know, when is parking allowed? When do you put out rubbish bins to to for them to be collected? So there there's a bunch of things to to think about here.

Next question.

Where does BIDI sit with general public and government? That, I do not know.

Do you know what that is?

That I wonder if that's is that bidirectional charging?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I think so.

Yeah. I mean, I you know, this is, I think this is really exciting technology. I think, you know, consumers, it's not available in, you know, for for many vehicles at the moment, but it is a way for us to use our electric vehicles as another another storage source to power our home. And I think in the future, once the regulation allows us to do this and then we have vehicles that have this capability, you suddenly have a battery on wheels, you know, sitting in your home or in your workplace. Mhmm. It lets you, arbitrage energy in a way that you haven't been able to before.

And I think this is something consumers will will get behind once the technology is there. We know we've got we're sort of in this environment. We've got rising energy costs. So whatever we can do to better make use of the way we're drawing our energy, I think is is, is really, really exciting.

Yeah. I'm gonna add to that. I think what we've seen is, in smart charging, especially for level two charges. It's been around for a while, I e, monitoring the wholesale prices and and really, charging when when prices are low and passing those savings on to the the customer.

The the issues with bidirectional is that there are some standards, particularly with charging that we've still have to get around. And, you know, I sit on a a board called char Charin, which is a global charging interface team. And they are going through these standards right now of how to figure out how to safely do it, how to measure it. There is a lot that goes into this. It'll happen, but, unfortunately, the standards boys do move slowly sometimes. So I think we see it as huge potential, but, it's it's it's going to be the the the details that that take a while to to, get through.

Another one here. A lot of press recent press attention that drivers don't want EVs.

How does this reconcile with your save your survey results, of increased interest?

I'm just gonna start off here before I throw it to Natasha.

This is exactly why we do these studies Because, you know, obviously, we see press, you know, will take bits and pieces, depending on on what they wanna say.

But really, we wanted to dive deep and say, hey. Look. Put all that aside. What is the actual data saying?

What do we see from thirty thousand respondents over, you know, how many years?

What are the trends that are happening here? And what we can see is that over a long period of time, interest in EVs, has been growing, and and that's from the data. That's that's not people just cherry picking stuff.

Natasha.

Yeah. And I and maybe just to add to that, like, I think there is a there's a difference between interest and purchasing.

Mhmm.

And so that's probably one thing just to to to kind of call out there. So there is growing interest, but, you know, making making the commitment and making the purchase is a much harder thing. But we are seeing I think, James, you mentioned before this this, you know, hybrids and plug in hybrid, they are a transitional step.

Mhmm.

And what's undeniable in this this survey that we've been doing year on year now is just that growing environmental sentiment. So the interest to reduce emissions is is strong and it's and it's growing especially, here in Australia. And then the other point to mention is just the, misinformation.

Like, I think, you know, people, you know, people are worried about price, but actually price prices of EVs have have reduced quite significantly. They're worried about range, but you're sort of seeing the, you know, the average range now of a a vehicle coming out of the US is, like, two two hundred and, you know, eighty miles or so. So it's, like, four hundred four hundred four fifty kilometers.

And there's more charging stations. So there's also this, like, there's a there is a difference in in, you know, like, understanding of what's what's true reality, which is something that will take take time to to to unravel.

Mhmm. And, really, I think the other point about this is is we really need to keep educating, people about, you know, what is it that that they're really looking at and how that they use their vehicles.

Okay. Maybe five or six hundred kilometers of range might be smaller than your your petrol or your diesel vehicle.

However, how often do you do that? And, you know, certainly, for me in in in in Canada, it's very rare that we would do trips beyond five hundred kilometers. So I I think and and Australia is even more urbanized than than, Canada is. So I think that's really important.

Let's have a here's a bit of a thorny one. Elon Musk will step down shortly from his government role. Will a potential increase in US Tesla sales due to tariffs on imported EVs to US, override the significant negative perception, reduction of sales, of the Tesla brand in the US.

I'm gonna I'm gonna have a little bit of a stab at this.

Certainly, what we've seen is by, Musk getting involved in politics, we've seen globally that that has had a a rather severe impact on the Tesla brand.

We are have seen sales, for q one, been down the most in, like, three years, down thirteen, fourteen percent, year on year. So I believe there is a strong impact, on brand that is happening with his involvement, in the US government right now.

Will a potential increase in in US Tesla sales due to tariffs?

It's a little bit tough to say, because of the impact on brand versus, the impact on tariffs. It is important to know that Tesla does source parts out of both Mexico, and Canada. So, you know, it's certainly not a, a hundred percent made in US vehicle, as is, every other vehicle that's made in US.

Will that, will that give them an advantage? Probably a little bit. But in in the US market too, we see a bunch of other, vehicles, from Ford, GM, Hyundai, and Kia, all made in the US too. So I I'm not sure that it's going to be a significant change in share because of that. If anything, the share of non Tesla will continue to rise.

Any thoughts?

Maybe I can answer this Australian perspective. I mean, you know, we're certainly, seeing a significant decrease in the demand for Teslas here in, here in Australia. Like, the February numbers for EV sales, this year were down substantially from the same time last year. And you could almost explain that gap literally on Tesla sales alone. So it's actually had there's been a really a really, really big impact, as a result of of of of the the price and what's been happening and the perceptions about about Elon Musk.

Here's a here's a question here.

Do you think that the disparate systems and pricing for paying to charge, is holding back adoption, and would a frictionless system, as we have seen in retail and ecom, significantly help?

Yes. It's the short answer.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Tap and go plug and play.

Yeah.

Tap and go.

Reliability is another really big thing, and reliability at the time that you need it. So it's so important.

This is, yeah, this is definitely definitely a barrier.

Yeah. I I totally agree, with this.

Certainly, again, back on the standards development, this is going ahead where where there's going to be ISO standards put in place.

But some of the problems that we're seeing is is that it's not just the charger, but it's sometimes the software in the vehicle not talking to the charger as well. Sometimes there's incompatibility.

So it's really important that we, that when the testing is done, that you are testing as many vehicles as you can as on as many different charges. I'd certainly Tesla always had this advantage because they just didn't need to do that. They had one type of charger, one type of car. It made it you know, well, two or three types of cars made it dead simple to make sure everything's working. When you have it across the board in a different comp different companies, it always becomes an issue.

Another question.

Once barrier price is addressed for EVs, the next biggest one is lack of public charging. What government policies do you see working the best in this space, such as funding or something else?

Yeah. I think I mean, public charging is is super important.

I think there is I mean, one thing that I'm always sort of noodling over is what is the right way to charge your vehicle?

And the the the more we can do low slow charging, I feel like that ultimately will give us the best outcome from a kind of cost of infrastructure perspective and then reduce the need for all this, like, you know, government funding to come in and come in and solve the issue for us. So, like, what I would rather see is, more ubiquitous charging, you know, and charging on things like street poles, being able to charge in your workplace, home, like, all of that sort of thing makes a really big difference.

In our building standards, like, we need to be, allowing or provisioning for the potential to charge again that low slow charging. So when you're building a new apartment block, you're building a new, you know, car park, whatever it might be that it is provisioned for that. So you can easily go back, and retrofit. So I think those things are really those things will really make a big difference in in getting charging available in more spaces, which is what we actually what we need.

But that low slow but because the more we put in, we are seeing a lot more fast charging coming, but just remember that is that is a bigger cost, not just the actual piece of charging equipment, but it is a bigger cost imposed on our, on our energy networks as well. And then remember, it's not just transportation that's demanding energy. It's AI. It's data centers.

Like, oh, there are there are multiple imposts on our energy grid, and there are multiple sectors that are trying to electrify at one time. It's not just us in our in our transport world.

I think the other comment too is, you know, the rise of grid side batteries, and that's been very particularly the case in in Australia, much more so than than here in in Canada, has been a a real boon for, you know, helping charging and helping fast charging happen. And and I think when electric trucks come on board, and electric, you know, very big vehicles, we're gonna see that, you know, more and more. So, and and sort of mining sites, in the Kimberleys are using big batteries to to, store energy.

One last one. We've only got a couple minutes to go, and, I'm gonna answer this, and I I know Natasha will wanna say something here.

And, are you guys tracking interest in hydrogen fuel vehicles? If so, any insights? Natasha.

Yeah. Look. We haven't done that in the in the survey yet. I mean, but we have, you know, as a firm been tracking hydrogen for the last, you know, five, six years. And I think, what we've come come to a conclusion on is it it's getting harder and harder.

And and if you kind of look at the, you know, spectrum of vehicles over time, you know, we started with looking at can we can we have hydrogen vehicles, hydrogen fueled, passenger vehicles? And we said, no. Actually, look, electric and batteries have just advanced so quickly. It doesn't make sense. Then we sort of said, what about trucks? What we found now is that, these sort of smaller midsize trucks can actually be electrified, and they can be electrified, especially, some of the smaller trucks are doing sort of less than three hundred k's a day.

Makes makes good sense actually to to choose a battery electric truck and the cost economics work. And so we're sort of, like, almost taking away use case by use case. I mean, look, I think that the jury is still out on some of, the, you know, heavy vehicle, heavy haul over long jurisdictions. But the thing with hydrogen, and it could we could solve this later in the future, but there is just so much we need in terms of the ecosystem that we need to build to support hydrogen.

We've gotta be able to to produce it actually in really quite large scale to make it cost competitive. And then not only that, we need, we need to be using renewable energy to make sure that it is actually a true renewable energy, source as well. And then we need the distribution network in order to get it to the places. So this, when you kind of think about it from that whole of ecosystem and infrastructure perspective, it's it's getting a little bit hard.

So that's why and we don't test it in this survey because this is a business of consumer survey.

But that's sort of our our perspective. I mean, I don't like to rule out any technology really, you know, in the future. You don't know what might what might happen if we might see some kind of breakthrough. But for the time being, the focus certainly, has been on battery.

Yeah. I I would a hundred percent agree with that. And, you know, as much as I don't like to rule out anything either, certainly, the trends that I'm seeing, even in trucks, we'll go electric. Even, we saw Fortescue, adopt big mining electric mining trucks instead of hydrogen. So, you know, I I just think the cost is far, far too high for for hydrogen to to really succeed and for really any investment to take place.

That is it. We have hit the hour. So, I just wanna thank Natasha and her team and, everyone at L E K for all their hard work. It's, the amount of work that you guys have put together is really amazing.

And, you know, obviously, we we couldn't do anything without your support. So thank you. I wanna thank the audience too. We had a a really large amount of, people turn out.

We had nearly seventy people come today. So thank you very much for coming. We really appreciate your support and and, coming along to hear what I have hear what we have to say.

Natasha, any parting words?

So much, everyone.

And, you'll get a copy of the recording and, a copy of the presentation Thanks again.