The electric car market will be $249 billion plus that for 48V mild hybrids with electric modes by 2027. The unique IDTechEx Research report Electric Car Technology and Forecasts 2017-2027 will assist investors, participants and intending participants in the value chain including manufacturers, developers, academics, government and users seeking the best forecasts and technology roadmaps based on new global investigation.

Only this report has the latest analysis by multilingual IDTechEx experts intensely travelling the world to the conferences, universities, companies and governments that will make it happen. The biggest change in cars for one hundred years is now starting, driven by totally new requirements and capabilities. They will cause huge new businesses to appear, but some giants currently making cars and their parts will spectacularly go bankrupt.

The report’s sober look at the detail reveals surprising aspects not popularly reported. For example, Fiat Chrysler is a laggard in EVs but they convinced us they are a leader in 48V MH. Why has Toyota just done a U turn on pure electric cars? Timing is all in this game.

Is there a hare and tortoise story here with Tesla terrifying the industry by becoming the Apple of automotive but acquiring major quality and financial challenges? Volkswagen and Daimler have become ambivalent about fuel cell cars and Toyota has just decided to go big on pure electric, in a change of emphasis. Hyundai say they are the end game, Honda says they are an important option and yet others call them “fool” cells. Who is right?

It is very important that readers escape the evangelism of so many commentators and access the sober analysis of companies such as IDTechEx. For example, this report breaks all the rules of safe manufacturing to radically change your product while increasing production one hundredfold yet we show how that is exactly what is happening with the lithium-ion batteries. Battery fires and explosions are ongoing but some car and battery makers have a superb record. Forecasts should not presume everything goes right. The anode, cathode, electrolyte and format are changing in a headlong race to smaller size and weight, less cooling and non-flammability.

• IDTechEx Research forecasts the electric car market will be $249 billion by 2027.

Fighting over a yellow cab is a long-enshrined tradition on the streets of New York City. Who hasn’t heard arguments erupt over who got there first or who needs the cab more? As words turn into shoving matches or even fistfights, the outcome is inevitably the same: The winner rides away in the back seat, leaving the loser seething at the curb. But instead of fighting, how about this jarring idea: sharing.

A new service gives passengers in thousands of yellow taxis the option of making space in the back seat for a stranger, in return for discounted fares. The shared rides are being offered through an unusual partnership between two competing ride-hailing apps: Via, which runs car pools in parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, and Curb, an alternative to sticking out an arm to hail a cab.

The service is the latest effort to help the city’s troubled yellow taxi industry, which has steadily lost ground to the extraordinary growth of black cars dispatched by Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing apps. It is intended to give New Yorkers another option for getting around at a time when the subway system has been overwhelmed by crowds and delays, and to create a more efficient transportation network with fewer cars driving around empty or clogging streets.

In doing so, it will also redirect passengers who have defected to the ride-hailing apps for convenience and cost back to the yellow cabs they left behind. Yellow cabs made an average of 332,075 trips per day in March 2017, down from 393,886 the year before, according to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, which regulates the industry.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/nyregion/new-york-yellow-taxis-ride-sharing.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170607&nlid=31553297&tntemail0=y

• Sharing instead of fighting over a yellow cab.

The technology research report “Car Sharing Market Size By Business Model (Round Trip, One Way), By Application (Business, Private), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Turkey, Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico), Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016 – 2024”, by Global Market Insights, Inc. says Car Sharing Market size is set to exceed USD 16.5 billion by 2024.

Stringent government regulations associated with the emission of harmful pollutants in the environment such as the EPA National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) are anticipated to drive the car sharing market. Various regulatory bodies from across the globe are supporting car sharing services. The German government has published a draft bill to accommodate car sharing in municipalities and cities to encourage the installation of the required infrastructure. The government sees this business model as a crucial element to make the transportation sector more environment-friendly. Additionally, it could reduce the need for owning a vehicle, particularly in urban areas.

The car sharing market aims at providing a cost-effective solution for vehicle owners to enhance their mobility and the daily commute. It helps users and authorities to efficiently manage the usage of parking space, improve travel choices, increase accessibility and reduce adverse environmental impact. Vehicle ownership comprises several fixed costs such as insurance, depreciation, and maintenance that adds significantly to the total cost of ownership. However, users of shared services pay only when they use a vehicle for time/distance based services.

A considerable percentage of U.S. consumers still consider personal cars as their preferred mode of transport, although preference is lower among younger consumers. However, the popularity of the car sharing market among the younger population is growing due to rising traffic congestion and high degree of convenience. Lack of proper transportation infrastructure in countries such as China, India, Turkey, Mexico, and Brazil is posing a challenge to the carsharing market.

One way car sharing market is expected to grow significantly over the forecast period due to the reduction in user inconvenience to return the vehicle at the starting point. One-way services are more flexible for the customers; however, they present more difficulties to operators. They are difficult to manage, as the freedom given to the users creates imbalances on the fleet distribution. To address the issue, the operator can move the vehicles from areas with surplus availability to areas with high demand.

Corporate applications accounted for majority of the car sharing market size and are expected to remain dominant over the forecast timespan. Vehicle parking space is a big problem for several businesses, which can be overcome by employing these services. U.S. car sharing market accounted for majority of the revenue in 2015 due to technology advancements. Increased funding activities from various organizations and authorities such as the Department of Transportation to promote these services is expected to propel the carsharing market demand.

• Car sharing market growing sharply.

Intel and market researcher Strategy Analytics have applied their collective brainpower to the impact of self-driving cars, and they’re predicting that we’ll see a “Passenger Economy” emerge from all of the services targeted at people while they are no longer driving their cars. By 2050, Intel and Strategy Analytics made the astounding prediction that the passenger economy will have a $7 trillion economic impact.

The companies estimated that the passenger economy (services to fill the idle time while you ride in a car) would be more than twice the size of the sharing economy (based on companies such as Uber or Lyft that share resources across many people) by 2050.

I have to remark how easy it is to ridicule this research. Economists have a hard enough time predicting economic change on a monthly basis. Intel paid Strategy Analytics to look at the economy 33 years from now, and it came up with a figure for the passenger economy being worth $7 trillion in 2050. Despite my light-hearted skepticism, Intel and the researchers are dead serious about the huge impact that self-driving will have.

Qualcomm recently looked into the same thing, starting with some very different assumptions. Qualcomm paid for a research paper created by David Teece, professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and market researcher IHS Markit to assess the impact of 5G mobile technology — which Qualcomm is playing a big hand in bringing about — on the economy. That report said 5G would create 22 million jobs and $12.3 trillion in impact on goods and services by 2035.

These predictions are surely going to be wildly off the mark, but I won’t be around to check — unless of course there are some real breakthroughs in biotechnology that will keep my brain intact. My prediction is that, thanks to Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the climate change accord, that the headquarters of both Intel and Qualcomm will be underwater by 2050.

Read more: https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/01/intel-predicts-autonomous-cars-will-spawn-a-passenger-economy/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=vbdaily&bt_ee=MZW0bN5YpWoObDQvNuCMgMuiz8xeEsGgnHGIq/cBmowMTvmE++GE6T52wg0IVAe6&bt_ts=1496416188107

• Intel predicts a ‘passenger economy’.

A senior adviser to the European Court of Justice said that Uber is a transportation company in an opinion on an ongoing case by Spanish taxi drivers. Classification as a transport company makes it easier for local, regional and national authorities to hit Uber with new regulations.

The Spanish taxi association that brought the case argues Uber should be regulated like a transportation company, but the ride-sharing service disagrees. The case has implications for a range of companies in the sharing economy including Airbnb or BlaBlaCar. “The service offered by Uber cannot be classified as an ‘information society service’,” said Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, according to a statement by the court. “The service offered by the Uber platform must be classified as a ‘service in the field of transport.”

The European Court of Justice will produce a final verdict in the coming months determining if Uber should be classified and therefore regulated as a passive internet intermediary, a transportation service or something in-between. ECJ judges follow the advice of the advocate general in the large majority of cases.

Read more: http://www.politico.eu/article/ecj-advocate-general-says-uber-is-a-transport-company/

Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-hail service, closed a $5.5 billion round of funding valuing the company at around $50 billion, the company confirmed today. That’s up from $34 billion, Didi’s last valuation when the company acquired Uber’s China assets. Bloomberg first reported the new round.

Part of that new injection of cash — which could make Didi one of China’s most valuable companies — will be dedicated to the company’s artificial intelligence and self-driving efforts as well as its international investments.

In March, the ride-hail company that was founded in 2012 opened up an AI lab that would focus on developing intelligent driving systems in Mountain View, Calif.

The lab is the first physical footprint the company established outside of China, and it’s already attracting top talent. Didi hired famed security expert Charlie Miller away from Uber’s self-driving arm, as well as Dr. Fengmin Gong, the co-founder of Palo Alto Networks and now Didi’s vice president of information security.

Before that, Didi’s international presence largely consisted of investments in foreign ride-hail companies like Grab, Ola, Lyft, and most recently Brazil’s 99Taxis. However, Didi, Grab, Lyft and Ola have mostly abandoned the tangible products that came out of what was once referred to as the international ride-hail alliance. Didi, Lyft, and Grab have done away with the cross-booking platforms the companies rolled out in China and the U.S. with much hype, as the costs outweighed the benefits.

Those relationships first became frayed after Didi’s acquisition of Uber. At that time, Lyft said it was reevaluating its partnership with the company. As for Ola, since Didi made such a small investment in the company, a source close to Ola said little changed in the company’s day-to-day affairs.

But sources told Recode that although Didi isn’t competing against Uber in China anymore, it plans to continue to do so through its investments in players in other regions. To that end, the company plans to dedicate some of its new funding toward its international strategy as well.

Read more:

https://www.recode.net/2017/4/28/15450220/didi-china-funding-most-valuable

• Didi Chuxing is getting close to Uber’s valuation.

Daimler’s Global Travel Management group asked its travel and technology supplier partners to completely rethink and simplify the whole corporate travel process. In response, those partners helped develop Daimler’s Global Travel Management “FiveStar Model.”

“When travellers spend too much time on travel administrative tasks like booking, paying and completing expense reports, a company the size of Daimler loses an equivalent of €25 million in productive working time each year,” said Daimler’s Head of Global Travel Management, Bernd Burkhardt.

Relying upon the strategic cooperation with Daimler, several suppliers—including BCD Travel, Amadeus and AirPlus—aim to create a new corporate travel process for Daimler in the FiveStar project which could also be used as a new industry solution. The process begins with simplifying search by using algorithms to identify the best trip package.

Rejecting the popular assumption that greater choice is always best allowed Daimler’s technology partners to focus on the underlying goal: simplifying the process for travellers. Instead of displaying all available content, travellers get only the most relevant air, hotel and car rental offers based on a traveller’s historical behavior, corporate policy, corporate supplier strategy and preferences.

Once travellers select travel dates and trip components, the FiveStar Model uses virtual account numbers to take care of payment throughout the whole process. This removes all hassle from the travel experience for the traveller. Automated invoice reconciliation throughout the trip and via mobile further simplifies the trip for travellers and reduces the time needed to process travel expenses to almost zero. All Daimler employees worldwide use a single, standardized, streamlined travel process—available to everyone around the clock using a global shared service model.

Although the individual components of the FiveStar model already largely existed, the holistic and multi-supplier approach is completely new and innovative. Providing a search functionality capable of delivering the “one best fit” option for any given traveller was one of the biggest challenges.

“Sometimes, giving people too many options is a bad thing, because it complicates and slows down the process,” said Burkhardt. “With this simple three-click process, business travellers are able to focus on the jobs they’re paid to do rather than on trip administration. This game- changing approach leads to a whole new travel experience when it comes to business travel. All Daimler travellers will use this process as a global standard rooted in digitalization, mobility and user friendliness.”

Daimler’s travel management company, BCD Travel, provides oversight to ensure each component part seamlessly supports the overall process. Amadeus delivers the search, booking engine and user interface. AirPlus manages fully integrated payment through to the expense provider.

With the program successfully piloted, Daimler will begin rolling out the model globally region-by-region in 2017. “It’s gratifying to serve as the TMC for a client that’s constantly working to improve travel management,” said Kathy Jackson, BCD Travel’s executive vice president of Global Client Management.

• BCD Travel, Amadeus and AirPlus work together to revolutionize Daimler’s Corporate Travel process.

Fastned, which is building a European network of fast charging stations, has signed a framework agreement with Transport for London to realise rapid charging stations in the Greater London Area. Transport for London (TfL) is the integrated transport authority for London and has set a goal to realise 300 rapid charging points before 2020. In the coming three years TfL plans to issue locations throughout London.

To ensure the quality of the charging network, TfL has run an extensive public tender procedure to select parties to realise this charging infrastructure.

Fastned is a charging company that already has 61 stations operational in The Netherlands. The ambition of Fastned is to realise a Pan-European rapid charging network that gives electric vehicle drivers the freedom to drive anywhere. After the recent announcement of Fastned’s expansion to Germany, this is an important next step towards European coverage.

The City of London has set ambitious targets to significantly reduce air pollution and vastly increase the number of electric vehicles on its roads. This ambition requires the realisation of high quality rapid charging infrastructure. To this end, TfL initiated a tender procedure in 2016 to select parties that are capable of being a concessionaire.

By 2020 the goal is to have 300 rapid charging points operational in the Greater London Area. For this TfL will issue long term land leases to concessionaires who will realise and operate these charging points. The first locations are expected to be allocated to concessionaires in the summer of 2017 after which realisation commences.

Michiel Langezaal, Founder and CEO. “We are very happy that TfL is making locations available for charging infrastructure through a public tender procedure. This enables Fastned to build the infrastructure required to give freedom to electric vehicle drivers and allows Fastned to live up to its mission to accelerate the advent of the electric car.”

• A Fastned charging station as it might be designed for London.