Mobility Innovators

Chapters:

• Introduction [00:00]
• About Sascha Meyer and professional journey [02:34]
• About MOIA – autonomous electric ride-hailing services [03:24]
• Future of Autonomous Mobility [13:49]
• Artificial Intelligence and Future job market [20:33]
• Regulatory framework for Autonomous vehicles in Europe [25:56]
• AV Technology – LiDAR vs. vision-based sensing [30:24]
• AV Integration with Public Transport [34:23]
• Future of job market [45:47]
• Mass adoption of self-driving vehicles [49:09]
• Leadership lessons [54:17]
• MOIA International Expansion [58:31]
• How cities can adopt large-scale AV services? [01:02:02]

Complete Transcripts:

Read Full Transcript

Sascha Meyer   ([00:00:00]):

I think in some cases there’s a bit of a reluctance to earn money. And that’s a curiosity that I perceive is like why should public transit systems always be in a deficit? Why not create a situation where you facilitate a willingness to pay of consumers that obviously a lot of them have because cars are not cheap, parking is not cheap. Even a right-hand vehicle is not cheap. Why would you be reluctant to just charge more than just a standard fare plus maybe a comfort charge and just say, okay, it’s another type of commercial service. And this can all be like reviewed with AV because we think customers will see it as a completely new opportunity.

And that’s partially what we have proven with Moia. Moia is run on a commercial model. Our rights are a lot more expensive than public transports, slightly cheaper than a taxi. They have detours and it’s fully accepted with Our fleet is more or less fully booked throughout the week. And this has proven this as just such an example. The wise use of dynamic pricing can have a great benefit for you to being able to sustain the services and provide services in the outskirts where otherwise you would not have the funding and financial capabilities.

Jaspal Singh ([00:01:19]):

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators Podcast.

Jaspal Singh ([00:01:27]):

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Mobility Innovator Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh

Mobility innovator podcast invites key innovators in the transportation and logistics sector to share their experiences and feature forecasts. In this episode, we’ll be discussing the innovation in autonomous space.

Today guest is responsible for running electric ride hailing service in Hamburg. He’s the CEO of MOIA. Prior to joining his current role, he was instrumental in shaping the company’s all electric right pooling services and autonomous driving strategy. First as a head of product starting in 2017 and then as a chief product officer from 2019 onward, MOIA is running a fleet of 565 battery electric vehicles in Hamburg.

Before joining MOIA, he spent several years as a management consultant advising international firm on digital transformation of transport and logistic. I’m so happy to welcome Sascha Meyer, CEO of MOIA. Now it’s time to listen and love.

Hello Sasha. I’m so happy to have you on the podcast. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know you were quite busy with a lot of things happening at MOIA, so thank you for taking time out.

Sascha Meyer   ([00:02:34]):

Yes, thanks for having me. It’s a really great opportunity to talk to you and educate on what we are doing day in and day out.

Jaspal Singh ([00:02:42]):

Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. And before starting to discuss about MOIA and autonomous vehicle, I want to actually start discussion with your professional career because it’s quite interesting journey you have so far. I saw you started your career as a consultant and then move into a product development, which is from consulting to actually getting your hand dirty and building thing and now you’re leading the company as in CEO. So I’m very curious to know how’s your professional journey shape up over the period of time and any interesting fact about your career, which is not on LinkedIn or which is not people aware about?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:03:24]):

Yeah, I think the most curious fact that is not on LinkedIn is that actually the first career that I followed was being a bass player. So I played electric bass and double bass. I even applied for the music university here in Germany and had the chance to go for it. But overnight I decided, oh, maybe it’s a better decision not to make your hobby into your profession and you start being dependent on it. So I did the right thing and I studied economics with a focus on e-commerce and logistics. And I think that’s kind of a nice coincidence because if I would somehow have to say what we are doing today at MOIA, I would say, okay, one part it’s because all digital what we build. And on the other side it’s logistics because efficiency, operational excellence, that’s also important if we speak about transit systems that you cannot just ignore this fact.

Sascha Meyer ([00:04:28]):

It’s a great combination. Afterwards, before I moved into consultancy, actually my first jobs have been in the area of product development in the mobile telecommunications industry. And so there I learned that I have a slight tendency for products that are on the one side, hard to explain On the other side I might be a little bit of the curve. So I worked in my first job on the introduction of fixed line MMS to send pictures to your grandma and they can receive it on their fixed line telephone. Turned out no one wants fixed line telephones anymore. So I moved on, as you said, I’ve been then been in consultancy after I’ve worked in product management for six years and founded a company in testing and mobile networks. And then I moved into consultancy to just see where can I apply all those things. I learned about how to build products in a rapid way in a complex environment.

Sascha Meyer ([00:05:29]):

And so I had the pleasure to work with a lot of different companies on how to craft not only digital strategies but actually how to execute them. And I learned a fair share of how agile software development works and how you can build customer focused development in the organization. And that brought me to MOIA in 2017 because at that point in time, my first son was on its way. I’ve been heading a unit in the consultancy and this brought me a lot of travel and general management and I said, I just don’t want to talk about it anymore. I still want to do it once again. And MOIA started in the town that I’m living in Hamburg, Germany. And so I had this opportunity to join being responsible for the product building what we call right pooling servers, DRT, however you want to phrase it here in my hometown.

Sascha Meyer ([00:06:22]):

And so I’ve done this as a chief product officer and in 2022 I was able to follow up on my predecessor Henry, who is now the CEO of Hamburg Hochbahn as a CEO of MOIA. And from that I was able to follow up on a dream that we had since the beginning to ensure that we not only build a great ride pooling technology, but to have autonomous vehicles that we can use. We launched in 2017, we all launched a company with a deep belief that this is going to be necessary. We saw as so many in the industry, yeah, maybe 2020-2021, we will have to chance to use autonomous vehicles here. It turned out it took a little bit longer, but I’m super glad that I’ve been resilient and stayed true to the course and have been working on the autonomous mobility program with Volkswagen and in the beginning with Argo AI later on with Mobileye to make this dream and disservice reality. And that’s where we are, that we are head of providing commercial services in Europe and also with our partners of the group Volkswagen in the us.

Jaspal Singh ([00:07:38]):

That’s amazing. I mean I learned a lot about your career. You’re starting as a bass player and then you were a founder as well. So that’s very interesting to know. So it’s not that you just build a product, but you actually built a company in the past and now you are leading exciting startup here in Hamburg.

And like you mentioned AV, there is always a prediction that it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. I think it’s like we in childhood, we used to hear a story about a fox or the fox is coming, fox is coming and now the fox is here and the challenge is how to deal with it. So you mentioned a little bit already about MOIA. So MOIA offer autonomous electric, ridehailing or car pooling or different way we can describe it. So in Germany and expanding now even beyond Germany. I’m curious to know a little bit more about MOIA and also what is your vision for MOIA for next five to 10 year? Because the world, I mean from 2020-2025, it’s like seven year we progress, but I’m pretty sure the next seven year even the progress will be much more accelerated and we will see the much more development because of a lot of technological innovation happening. So what’s your vision, how you see company in 2032 or 2030?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:08:57]):

Yeah, I think the vision starts with the heritage. We are a Volkswagen subsidiary, so we are part of the Volkswagen group and brand and we have been created and founded to create solutions for urban and later on rural environments. And for us, we spend a lot of time thinking about how cars can be part of that solution instead of being part of the problem. And the idea that we have and that we’ve made reality is to create a service that is specifically optimized and built from the ground up for what we call right pooling I think in the industry would be called DRT and operate this on a large scale. And for this we have created our service here in Hamburg, which runs with 565 purpose-built vehicles. So it’s a full battery electric, six seater vehicles. We operate stop to stop with more than 14,000 stops here in the city of Hamburg.

Sascha Meyer ([00:10:07]):

And since 2019 we were able to welcome 12 million passengers on board of our vehicle despite COVID. And so we have been in the great situation that we learned so much about customer behavior, what do they value, what do they prefer? How do we operate full electric battery driven fleet in real world operations, how can we automate all this? And this has all been created with the clear understanding that at a certain point in time we will have autonomous vehicles and we prepared our ourself for exactly this kind of operation. What we’ve been particularly proud of is that the city of Hamburg and MOIA have such a great cooperation that we are now awarded and being considered public transport. And this is kind of a curiosity I would say because no one would ever consider that Volkswagen would officially be called a public transport operator in the city.

Sascha Meyer ([00:11:13]):

But that’s reality with MOIA. And was that something that I personally really enjoy because I want to create mobility for the common good is that we were able to serve more than 400,000 rides last year alone for free, for severely handicapped users and provide more than 30,000 rides for people who need a wheelchair service. And this is something that really pays into division of MOIA that we want to build a future of mobility that save autonomous and particularly driven by cities and their people. And as I said, we are now in a state of conversion because we don’t want to be B2C provider. We have learned also together with being part of UITP that there are so many great entities, authorities, operators in the world that we can work with and provide what we can do best, our technology with the car, with our ad platform that we’ve built that you need to run safe and efficient services and enable the operators for the future operations of autonomous vehicles. And that’s our turnkey solution that we create together with our partners in the Volkswagen group. And we test that in Hamburg, Munich, in Austin, Texas. We started testing in Oslo, Norway for winter conditions and our aim is to create this autonomous ride pooling service to be then used as part of public transport ecosystem in Europe and the USA.

Jaspal Singh ([00:12:52]):

That’s amazing. I think you mentioned something very interesting and basically it’s very impressive. Congratulations. I mean 12 million rides so far and especially during pandemic and everything stopped. So I can imagine if the pandemic didn’t happen then probably this ride would have been doubled by now. But still it’s very impressive. And like you mentioned, it’s very important to understand the customer behavior and what make MOIA a little special is it’s considered public transport. It’s not considered as a private autonomous vehicle or the ride pulling service and it’s actually considered as an integrated part of public transport. And actually I want to jump to this question because like many cities see autonomous mobility either as a boon or bain, depending on its use like you mentioned it can have a different pact and it’s very interesting that MOIA is taking a very different approach compared to the other player in US and China.

Jaspal Singh ([00:13:49]):

What we see right now, like from day one, you’re integrated with public transport network. Why do you think the city should integrate AV in the network? Because sometimes city feel threatened by the AV technology and they don’t want to do it. And similarly with ride pooling services or ride hailing services, when these services emerge in 2009 and 2010, a lot of cities said, no, no, no, we should not integrate and now they’re working and what should we do to make sure autonomous mobility can help cities? It can be compliment rather than compete how you think these two angle.

Sascha Meyer   ([00:14:27]):

Yeah, first of all, I love technology and my whole life I’ve been playing around with technology from my first 56K mode up until all the great tools AI is throwing up on me. And I’m just curious how all this works. And one core belief that I have is that it’s not the technology that can be either good or bad simplified, it’s the application of the technology in the given circumstances. And on your question, I think it’s very important that the industry and regulators, policy makers, that they understand that it’s, I would say unviable that this technology will hit the roads if you like it or if you don’t like it does not play a role. It’s like with cellular communication at a certain point in time it will be there. And what we understand is that there’s a clear customer preference and what gets people in their cars is reliability, safety and comfort.

Sascha Meyer ([00:15:38]):

And it’s as simple as that. And I think if we look on our transit systems then people will be more likely to use it if they find these three values implemented in the systems. And we know that public transit has struggled in the past due to all the trade-offs that you have to make between politics, funding, efficiency of the systems, scarcity of driver. There is a lot of complexity but autonomous vehicles, if you understand what capabilities are in the technology, it gives you a lot of opportunity to rethink what you are doing. And I think cities should start to embark on this journey to come up with their individual vision on autonomous mobility. And I think again, there’s no good application or bad application I think right hailing in the us it fits the customer’s weak demand and to be honest is also relieves the public transport from a lot of questions on how to provide some kind of shared mobility cause it’s handled by private companies,

Sascha Meyer ([00:16:48]):

It’s a different story. Robo taxis can be a great fit and provide a contribution to society because the technology will likely trickle down and can then be used to increase equity and help communities to be better integrated into bigger scheme of things. In Europe, the situation is kind of different here we try to bring more people on our network on the great mass transit that we have in a lot of places, but we struggle to have good quality of service in the outskirts and that’s why still a lot of people rely on their cars. And I think if you as a policymaker regulator and so on start to rethink what you do and see the opportunities on how to solve the different challenges that you have with a vehicle technology, you can find the right answers for your city, for your communities to proceed. I think in some cases there’s a bit of a reluctance to earn money and that’s a curiosity that I perceive is like why should public transit systems always be in a deficit?

Sascha Meyer ([00:17:58]):

Why not create a situation where you facilitate a willingness to pay of consumers that obviously a lot of them have because cars are not cheap, parking is not cheap. Even a right hair vehicle is not cheap. Why would you be reluctant to just charge more than just a standard fare plus maybe a comfort charge and just say, okay, it’s another type of commercial service and this can all be reviewed with AV because we think customers will see it as a completely new opportunity. And that’s partially what we have proven with MOIA. MOIA is run on a commercial model. Our rights are a lot more expensive than public transport, slightly cheaper than a taxi. They have detours and it’s fully accepted with our fleet is more or less fully booked throughout the week. And this has proven this as just such an example, the wise use of dynamic pricing can have a great benefit for you to being able to sustain the services and provide services in the outskirts where otherwise you would not have the funding and financial capabilities. So to me, think about how you apply the technology, that’s the important thing. Come up with your own vision. There’s a lot of toolings experts that can help you simulate so you don’t have to be unprepared and unknowledgeable and then start to set the right to dig the right channels for the water to come.

Jaspal Singh ([00:19:21]):

I like your approach because instead of having the same approach all cities should follow, every city should have their own vision, a vision. And you rightly mentioned no likely safety and comfort. These are any customer, the pricing never come upfront. The key factor they always ask is I want safe, I want comfortable journey. And there is a huge gap between the taxi and public transport. There is a segment which is unserved and public transport actually can take that opportunity to, like you said, create a new product for people who are willing to pay a little bit more. And this question about why public transport should be in deficit. I mean we can understand some of the rides will be in deficit because they have a larger purpose to serve. But at the same time there is an opportunity exists in the market. I was reading this book and that book called Gung-Ho and there is a statement in this book it say it’s not that people don’t want to change, it’s the comfort of change, push people not to change because there is a lot of discomfort when you change thing and sometimes that discomfort doesn’t allow people to change.

 

Jaspal Singh ([00:20:33]):

I think cities want to do but it’s like they don’t know where to start. And the challenge and then also I think a lot of things people feel that autonomous mobility is still far away, whereas I think it’s picking up very fast and many companies are doing commercial operation. There are local permits are given on public low road in the USA, China, Germany, Israel, there are already some vehicles that are running and we see the commercial service being operated by Waymo, Cruise, Baidu, I mean I no Cruise, some bad thing happens so they stop. But still Waymo and Baidu and Tesla now launched their robot service. So how can we expect, when can we expect a fully autonomous fleet on the public road? What is your, I would say because everybody make a prediction every two year it’s coming next. But what is your prediction? When can we see the fully autonomous fleet on the road and how do you see MOIA playing an important role during that time when there is a mass adoption of AV on the public road?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:21:38]):

Yep. I think for the US market it’s pretty clear it’s there. So I would say the industry led by Waymo doing a great job. Others are closely following on the timeline. We have reached Basecamp.

Sascha Meyer ([00:21:55]):

So what do I mean by Basecamp? We have proven that the technology is there, the business case just is not yet there. It’s too costly to operate the vehicles. One huge factor is the ratio of operators per vehicle. It’s the cost of integration, it’s the robustness of the vehicle. So there’s a lot of different ingredients now right now as a product guy I would say we see a great MVP, it serves its purpose, it’s there, it just lacks the unit economics and some tweaking here and there. And I think that’s really the question for the US market. When will it become mass marketable? Adoptable? And I think that will come with the next generation of vehicles, whoever is going to produce that vehicles, a lot of the learnings will be incorporated. A lot of technology will unlock new functionality that drives down the cost of remote operations and remote safety procedures.

Sascha Meyer ([00:22:55]):

And I think that creates a huge benefit. I think this, there’s not the one day anymore where it will all happen. I think it’s going to be a gradual change now from an MVP into a commercialized business that is actually able to be sustainable for the whole industry. On the European landscape, the German and a lot of European regulators, they have created a higher set of requirements that requests you as a vehicle manufacturer or AAV company to build a vehicle made for these requirements. And this is things like redundant brake system, redundant steering. You need to have a remote control center that adheres to certain standards specifically defined. So there’s a lot of complexity in the engineering process and you actually need an OAM, so a car manufacturer to certify this vehicle as a whole including the SDS system, including the ecosystem and the task or validation verification becomes a lot harder. And the question of who takes the liability is a different beast than the self-certification process in the us. And so the timeline in the Europe, it’s slightly delayed due to that fact and due to these entrance barriers in most of the member countries. And here I think we are the front runner with our vehicle project that we have designed our vehicle according to the requirements and we have the procedures and the standards in place how to homologate and verify these vehicles. And we target for commercial operation in Hamburg by 2027.

Sascha Meyer ([00:24:52]):

Clear answer, it’s in two years.

Jaspal Singh ([00:24:57]):

Wish you good luck. Like you mentioned, there’s a lot of complexity around it and I was not aware that the car company need to kind of certify the whole ecosystem. Not only the vehicle but also the ecosystem and redundant brake, redundant steering and then remote monitoring. It’s a lot. So I’m curious now, like you mentioned clearly in US the approach is very different. China we know the approach is very different and Europe is taking a very different approach. What are the regulatory framework for AV in Europe which you feel is a bit challenging or which probably need a little bit of review and what Europe need to do to accelerate the deployment of AV? Because like you said, Europe has very good public transportation system, it just need to connect the last mile and first mile and connect the suburb. So I think it’s a perfect case to deploy AV. What is we are missing in Europe?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:25:56]):

I would not specifically say Europe is missing something. Europe has just a different approach of regulate first. And to be honest, I being responsible for the commercialization of this business, I do actually like that it gives me some sort of investment security. I know that if I am able to prove that we adhere to the standards defined as an example in the German law for autonomous driving and the ordinance for autonomous driving, we will be able to start and no one can stop us. And it also gives me some sort of liability shielding for me personally, for the whole team. We can say, okay, let’s look on this. This is all the precautions that we have taken. We’ve verified, this is all redundant, this is built according to the UNEC standards. We applied so we applied a spy. So there’s a lot of different industry standards that give me a lot more security that I know, okay, if I follow the rules then I can immediately jump into commercialization for sure.

Sascha Meyer ([00:27:08]):

This ignores totally driving performance. This ignores the driving comfort of an AV system. It can be a completely different story but in our approach that’s something where we see that there are a lot of players coming up in the market. I think Mobileye leading the pack but is more like wave May Mobility, Pony AI, a lot of players in the market who specifically aim for not being the total vertical integrated company like Waymo, Zooms, Tesla, but they are looking for partners to work in the local environments that can provide vehicle that can provide the 80 miles ecosystem that have access to operators. And that’s exactly the spot that we aim for with our business model. So I think Europe has a different approach. It’s not a notoriously bad approach, it’s not as I would say innovation friendly as in the US. That’s also the reason why I think there’s a limited amount of AV companies who have prevailed with the driving task up until today. But technology will evolve. It will be more commoditized with AI. We will see end-to-end AI systems that are capable and they will leapfrog some of the developments we have seen in the last 10 years. And then it’s more about building a whole system that is safe and ready for operations.

Jaspal Singh ([00:28:30]):

I agree with you. It’s more like regulate first but it’s also give you heads up because then you don’t need to tackle those issues later. You already solve those complex problem. The only, like you mentioned sometime it make it much more difficult for innovators because you need to start is dealing with this complex problem at the same time you’re building a product. So you need to take both these regulatory issues as well as product issue together. Now one of the technology issue a lot of companies are discussing is Lidar Vs. vision based sensing approach. I mean being MOIA, like you mentioned, you have a sweet spot in managing the vehicle, understanding the vehicle technology and all. And some company we saw Tesla is betting more on vehicle camera whereas Waymo is more betting on the sensor LIDAR and all. And I don’t know if you saw the conversation between the Uber CEO and Elon Musk where Uber CEO said that camera only self-driving is very difficult and Elon Musk came back and said he actually turned off radar in Tesla because there was a conflict like who will get the priority if the camera sees something and Lidar sees something who get more priority.

Jaspal Singh ([00:29:47]):

So he said no, Camera will be the one which will win end of the game. So as someone who work in this area and who’s I would say one of the expert which technology you are more bullish and why and how you think AI can help to change this whole thing because two year back or three year back AI was not that omnipresent. But now AI is there everything. I open my Home Depot app and I see view review by AI. It is like now you see AI everywhere. So how you see AI will also help to play.

Sascha Meyer   ([00:30:24]):

Yeah, I think that’s an all time classic discussion of the industry. What is our stance on that? First of all, as an integrator of the technology for us one of the biggest risk is to take unnecessary risks

Sascha Meyer ([00:30:42]):

And like you mentioned the unfamous example of cruise and what happened to them, it was not due to the technology, you don’t get me wrong here, but it has clearly shown one sign in the industry no matter how much you have spent before, no matter what your track record is, it’s one critical single incident that can take down not only the company but I would say can take down and throw back the industry by years. So not taking risks that you can avoid. For us it’s a prime directive if we see on the technologies available for sure. Most systems heavily rely on the perception driven by camera systems and this can get you a long way and as you said with end-to-end AI, you can see stellar driving performance without even having a base map below driving to cities just by the behavioral learning that is happening with end-to-end AI.

Sascha Meyer ([00:31:45]):

That then comes in the complexity and for us a level of consideration, we have made experiences testing in winter condition and it’s just one example is to have a white pile of snow in front of a white pile of snow. It does not give you any sort of depth information and it does not give you any information whether behind this pile of snow is there a car, is there nothing or is there a rock? And having driven our vehicles in Oslo, I was very happy that the vehicle was able to detect whether it can in an emergency situation, partially drive on that pile of snow or it can’t. And this is one example where cameras can be misleading, they can be misled. So it’s one vector of manipulation that you can avoid and if there’s no light, cameras don’t work. So good luck in a dark tunnel, good luck in a garage.

Sascha Meyer ([00:32:46]):

And so we think that at least having one sense of capability that is not dependent on light or atmosphere. It lights on its own will be keen. We think right now the combination of camera, lidar and radar is the best you can get. We see technology evolving and raters getting better and not only providing you with a one point information of an object and how fast it moves, but provide you with a point cloud and those kind of 3D imaging raters, they can likely be a replacement of lidars and I think sensor technology will ever more evolve then it’s a game of economics and how you compute and how you do the sensor fusion in the backend. But for us it’s quite clear I would not bet my life on just a single non-redundant system to be frank.

Jaspal Singh ([00:33:36]):

Yeah, I love your point about not taking risks which you can avoid so it’s better not to take risks. And you rightly mentioned about Cruise, it was one of the incident which actually led to the whole collapse and it’s not that was bad because you driven millions of mile and one particular mile, something happened, the whole thing blame for that one particular mile and some of the edge cases you mentioned now it forced me to rethink like the dark night when there is no light. Let’s say you are in suburban area, there is no street light and something happened and then you have nothing to see and snow. I can imagine in Canada we have a lot of snow and sometime we don’t know what is behind the snow. It can be humid, it can be car, it can be more snow. So that’s another.

Jaspal Singh ([00:34:23]):

And when we have a big snowfall that’s the case. You see snow piles everywhere and sometime as a human it’s very difficult for us to drive because we don’t know what’s coming in that back because you don’t have that visibility. So LIDAR and ADA can really help. No good to hear that. Like you said, it’s a classic debate. There is no one answer you need to find a solution for these edge cases. So thanks for sharing that. I mean I really, really find it’s useful. Now a lot of experts say that the future of mobility is case which is Connected, Autonomous, Shared electric and MOIA is actually doing all of these cases now these are connected vehicles, these are autonomous, these are shared and these are electric and I think there will be a big wave of change in next four or five years. What happened with on-demand mobility in 2010 when these on mobile, on-demand mobility or I would say actually the smartphone came with the smartphone, there were a lot of other thing became possible. How do you see the integration between ride-pooling and autonomy fitting together for future of public transport in Europe and globe? You already mentioned about some cases in US and Europe, but what do you see overall in other market like in Asia or other countries? How do you see AV and ride hailing will definitely work together.

Sascha Meyer   ([00:35:48]):

For me it’s just a consequential next step for the hold ride-hailing industry. And our market understanding is that the adoption will first be driven in markets that are challenged by demographic change. So if there’s a scarcity of driver, if there’s a cost pressure due to the scarcity of driver, then this will likely create better business cases and also be more relevant for public players to early on adopt autonomous mobility into their existing frameworks. What we see is that the technology will first be applied in smaller body form vehicles. So be it cars, be it van like our AV bus or be it smaller, six to 10 seaters. That’s for a reason because it’s easier to maneuver and the coverage of the whole vehicle how to create a 360 degree coverage of the sensor is easier to create. And something that we realized is that if you want to bring in an self-driving system into a city bus and even latency from the end of a standard bus to the compute system can be a huge issue.

Sascha Meyer ([00:37:12]):

And then to be honest, it’s not a huge business case. The technology itself is very costly. The amount of buses bought worldwide is rather small and the economic benefit for the operators of bus lines is just smaller because with one driver you can transport up to 50, 60, 70 people if well if there’s good efficiency in the service. So that’s why we see that the majority of the vehicles available in the next five years will rather be from a public transit point of view be small sized vehicle and this brings you to the opportunity to use them as you said for first last mile, but also for connecting suburb areas into the city centers also provide point to point mobility for people who have the specific need and if the city is open to that, even earn money to that and kind of replacing taxi services, we see that taxi also has dramatic economic problems to the scarcity of drivers and I think that’s the three main angles that we see later on for sure.

Sascha Meyer ([00:38:26]):

Replacing underutilized bus lines by more flexible transportation schemes during night times in the outskirts. That can be a huge supportive case in a city as you can directly save a lot of money for not operating a bus line that is utilized with three to five people an hour. It gives more flexibility and it’s better for the consumers. So that’s a great win-win. Later on I think we will see that the vehicles will be able to drive more into the countryside and then I think there is a huge opportunity to connect communities that currently are lacking proper public transit options to connect them to suburban centers and get them into the mass transit and just also provide better mobility for elder people and people with special needs.

Jaspal Singh ([00:39:24]):

I think you really mentioned right now a lot of countries are facing issue with the cost, the driver shortage and the operation. So this can be good solution for them to start. The cost is a main prohibitive. Recently during the LA unrest they burned some vehicle and somehow somebody able to estimate the price of each memo and they estimated around $1 million for each Waymo car, which it costs $1 million. I don’t know if that’s correct or not, but somebody kind of estimated. And I think the point you mentioned about the knight service and all in sea actually they’re doing pilot of commercial autonomous buses in the night service because it’s difficult to find drivers and you need to pay much more higher and the passenger load is not that high like you mentioned four or five people. So how can you serve those time or services with autonomous vehicle call?

Jaspal Singh ([00:40:26]):

So we will see. And then also there is less traffic so the roads are much safer compared to daytime when there is a lot of traffic. So we’ll see these changes. No, that’s a good point and actually you mentioned something important about the driver shortage but it’s also I feel with the technology a lot of jobs will change and AI is already a buzzword and I was reading an article published by financial time in 2017 which say that plan for five career in a lifetime. So it means you cannot rely on one career and lot of people are predicting that AI, a lot of jobs will go away, especially the drivers, the taxi driver and ride pooling driver, you don’t need them anymore. Other people say no, no, no, it’s not going to have big impact. You need human with technology which side you are. And do you think AI will bring radical change in our society? Especially like you mentioned with mobility you can actually connect the suburb, you can connect mobility for elders. With the demographic change we’ll have more older population, we can actually provide service to people who didn’t have those service. So probably people will travel more, much more. I’m sitting in my car in the night doing intercity sleeping and instead of taking the plane, I’m just using my nighttime and going to that. How are you seeing the society will change in future?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:41:56]):

If we look on the long run and I think AI and automation, physical AI, embodied AI, however you want to call it, it will have a tremendous impact on the landscape of drops if you compare that. I think the closest I can remember is the examples of farmers who had a lot of people working on the farms day in day out preparing the soil and so on and then suddenly the tractors came and people moved into factories, they moved into the dealership and workshops to maintain the tractors. So I think we are on the brink of again leap in the after industrialization. I think now it’s going to be a next leap in the economic landscape that we will see with the rise of AI. I think the timeframe is vastly overestimated and hyped. I think yes there’s AI can provide a lot of beneficial information, it can relieve you of a lot of task, it can relieve you a lot of work in your business that does not utilize the full mental capacity and creativity of people and therefore I think the current rise of LLMs can be huge push towards that.

Sascha Meyer ([00:43:26]):

I love that companies again start to consider how they can use data, how they can make sense out of that. I think there’s a lot of potential for the ecologic benefit of this planet if we use what is known and ultimately I think it will be a conversion in society but it will not happen overnight. I think we look into 15-20 years of conversion specifically when we talk about all things physical because if the story of it comes into years of autonomous vehicles has taught us one thing, as soon as you are in a real world environment, it’s a different beast and it’s not a hyper scaling business like in the internet. It’ll require time, it’ll require acceptance, it’ll require people with strong beliefs and it’ll require the support from the society to happen. And I think it’s different perspectives if you look on how China is dealing with that, I think it’s impressive on how convinced and how long-term perspective and with how strong support for businesses they already consider today how the society of the future can look like. And I think there’s a lot to learn for all so-called western countries.

Jaspal Singh ([00:44:51]):

Yeah, I mean that’s exactly mentioned. It’s very impressive to see in China now. They already introduced AI to kids in the school and I’m trying to do the same with my kids. I asked them to use ChatGPT a little bit more yesterday. He was conversing with ChatGPT asking even sometimes stupid question but at least he’s learning how to do it and using those things. I don’t know if you need to learn typing or not anymore because now it is more conversational. But I find it very interesting and I’m curious, like you said it’ll take 15 to 20 years so it’s good for our career. We are still have 20 years so we are kind of safe in that sense. How do you see it’ll change, the life will change for the future generation for technology? Because you said you love technology, so what are you telling your kid? What should they learn to be ready for the next change?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:45:47]):

That’s a good thing. I think if my kids would ask me today I would say learn either something creative and physical. If you are the best carpenter, I think this still will have a values will you in the years to come. It’s like with traditional handmade watches, yes it’ll be a niche market. It will not be super world dominating market. But I think humans have shown that such niches they are great and they will prevail. I think that’s a safe bet if you might not want to change career every five years. And the other thing is I think emotional intelligence and creativity that’s going to be stellar’s skill for the future. I think in the past problem solving has been super important but with the reasoning of ai that might be less of a skill. So I think connecting the dots bring the people together and creating coalition and motivation and creativity on how to solve problems aside from just pure creation of options. That can be a great thing to do.

 

Jaspal Singh ([00:47:02]):

Very interesting. I mean this is the question I keep asking myself. What should I push them? Should they learn coding? Should they learn something else? And like you said, the problem solving is going to be not that important. It’ll be more like how creative we are. How can you bring people together? What can you do?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:47:20]):

Definitely not coding. Not coding, definitely not because we see that tasks that developers have taken four hours or more to do now with Gen AI can create it in four minutes. So the job changes more into validating and verifying whether this is actually what they wanted and we are not yet there. But I think coding it’ll be less important in discovery and creation.

Jaspal Singh ([00:47:46]):

That’s what I think. It’s a hard change. It’s a hard change for the society like you. I really love your example about farmer and human labor and then from actually working in the farm, they actually shift to the factory and the service center and the sales center. So they became redundant but they profile completely changed. Instead of sowing the seed, now they are learning how to replace the tire and put the engine back and all those kind of stuff. Something you mentioned very interesting about the acceptability of this change. I personally use autonomous vehicle in San Francisco. I took a vehicle drive in Beijing Guangzhou. I mean I tried different country and also in Germany I saw and I would say I was curious for 10-15 minutes and after that it became business as result. You don’t care what’s going on because you feel like okay it’s normal but there are many people still not comfortable with autonomous vehicle. I don’t know. In Hamburg also you must be discussing with people or you are getting some feedback from people. How do you think the mass adoption of self-driving vehicle will happen or we will never happen, we can never have a cashless society. Still people love to have cash because of different reasons. So do you think we will have a fully self-driving vehicle societies or it’ll be like a hybrid?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:49:09]):

I think it will be hybrid for a long time. People just love to drive and that’s fair for the acceptance of the autonomous vehicle. I think the application is really key. So who do you market the service for? Is it serving the common good or is it serving just a minority at a premium price? I think that’s something that with my background in mobile communication that you can learn from this case is that in the beginning cellular communication was a luxury is good. You had to pay 30,000 euros, dollars, whatever in that time for a phone that did fit in your trunk and it was like a statue symbol for the rich. And I think that’s exactly where the technology is. It’s not there for production, it’s not there for every household. It’s still too expensive to be able to serve the common good. So that’s where we just are in the industry.

Sascha Meyer ([00:50:04]):

But now it’s important to really leap forward and create services that even with public funding they educate people that it’s not a technology that is made to clock your streets and just make people go faster to their country houses by going through your backyard. But it’s a service that can serve you and your family in all situation. And there are the cases if you have some sort of disability and as you might remember from UITP, I just had the unfortunate mishap that I was limited in my mobility and I was reliant on taxi services and MOIA to come from A to B because I was not able to climb any stairs. And if we as an industry as policy makers, if we make sure that the AVs are applied in such a manner that they help you in these kind of situation, then the public acceptance will come a lot sooner than if we wait for it to trickle down the path of commercialization that private companies would go.

Jaspal Singh ([00:51:19]):

I fully agree with that. And I can also see our demographic change. The aging parents, the old people they cannot drive and the young population they cannot drive. So it can be perfect fit for them like sending those vehicle now I think Waymo just launched a service in San Francisco where the kids can take the ride, the parents can book a ride for their kids, young kids into classes and doing some activity and they feel more safer because the vehicle will go and they can see the feed and they can see everything in the vehicle. So I fully agree you need to create those cases and make people comfortable with it rather than just leaving it to some private company to do it. So the city need to come forward and do it.

Sascha Meyer   ([00:52:06]):

Just like to add on, the majority of our users of our MOIA service are female.

Jaspal Singh ([00:52:11]):

Female. And why that. Do you think to the safety?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:52:13]):

You don’t have to stand in a crowded bus, stop in the middle of the night cause it’s a smaller load factor cause they are a little bit detached from the drivers that we have and we would love to offer women for women service today, but unfortunately we don’t find sufficient female driving staff to make this happen. But we know once we have autonomous vehicles, this is going to be a game changing moment for all women who want to travel at night. And it’s exactly how you say it with children, with women, anyone who has special requirements on safety, this is going to be huge. And if we really market that and if we create those applications together, then it’s going to be a blast.

Jaspal Singh ([00:53:09]):

Yeah, no that’s interesting because I saw many countries they launch like a special women’s service being taxis being ride services, but I didn’t see any successful case. And like you mentioned, there are not enough women drivers. So even though you have enough women riders, there are not enough women driver to drive those vehicles. So you always face this challenge. Now I want to switch gears and want to discuss a little bit about your leadership philosophy.

Like you mentioned you being a founder in the past and lived many, we have many hats in the past I thought you’re not a founder but you’re a founder and you mentioned you corrected me that you founded a company and now you are currently leading a startup. So what is your leadership style and now how do you keep the startup spirit alive at MOIA? Because like you said, you’re a part of a Volkswagen group, Volkswagen is such a big group, it’s come with a lot of advantage, but it’s also come with a lot of legacy. How do you make sure that MOIA still remain as a company which has a startup spirit?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:54:17]):

Yeah, I think one important aspect of my leadership style and management style is being obsessed with the customer experience that we create. And I think you’ve witnessed a little bit of how I explain and look on things. That’s one of the intentions I have is to create great products for the customers. And this comes from a lesson I learned with exactly funding the founding the first company. We’ve used great technology to solve a problem that at the point in time when we hit market in 2008 was no one willing to pay for it was solely about quality. And at this point in time we failed to pivot towards something that helps to lower cost. Cause that was the only thing that was relevant in the mobile industry at that point in time. And so I learned that it’s important to listen to your customer not just once, but keep an eye on what is happening, talk to everyone that you want to collaborate with and be keen that you’re able to make the best integration of what people want and what you with the technology are able to provide.

Sascha Meyer ([00:55:24]):

I think what for me is super important is the encouragement of experimentation. So I rather start getting stuff done, experiment it, make quick decisions and move on than to make a long, long, long plan That never comes to reality. So for me, really trying things out is super important and with MOIA we’ve done so many crazy things that didn’t work out but it’s a good thing because it’s not worth the effort, it’s just not the right situation or we’ve not had the best idea. And I think that’s more important than to talk all about what could have happened if we would have done it. And then if it comes to people, I would say if you ask my team, one of the aspects I have is being authentic and candid transparency. So you wouldn’t be surprised on the level of detailed information that I share with the team.

Sascha Meyer ([00:56:19]):

And I’m not a sugarcoating guy, so it’s like if there’s anything wrong, if it takes longer, if we have to pivot, if we have taken a wrong decision, then I say that because I think we are all grown-ups and it’s super important that people can take their individual decisions on whether they want to stay and they are motivated and they embark on their journey or when they say no it’s not the company that I want to work for a different thing now and thought is super important to me to create this transparency on what is happening. I think you can’t over communicate. So I would say my main job is being chief repetition officer.

Jaspal Singh ([00:57:04]):

That’s what I see. All the leaders, they have to keep repeating the same message again and again. And in fact I tell my team also is like we are like a soccer team. It doesn’t matter what you did in the past, it matter what you’re doing now. If you perform well, you stay. If you don’t perform well, you’ll be called as a legend but not as a current player. And that’s where you need to keep your game up all the time. So I like what you said, it’s like everybody’s grown up, so not sugar coating and telling what’s right.

Now there are very few startup which we see most of the startup from us going out and become international and expanding in Europe and all. But there are not many big startup which have moved from Europe like Spotify is one example, Skype and all. There are some good example I will not say, but very few example of European startup going out. And it’s also because of the leadership style. The leadership style in Europe and US is very different. I think MOIA is also interesting case because you recently partnered with Uber and you’re going to launch service in the US. You already mentioned about Austin that they are doing something there. Can you share one about this collaboration and what is the future plan for Moia? How you think a European company going forward and expanding in us?

Sascha Meyer   ([00:58:31]):

Yeah, you often use the term startup. So it’s a bit of a mixed feeling for me here because on the one side I would say we feel ourselves as a little outgrown startup

Sascha Meyer ([00:58:44]):

On the other side, we are part of one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world with the Volkswagen group. And this is exactly our, I would say, mental relation to what we are doing. On the one side, we know we need to prove what we are doing in our local market in Hamburg, but at the same time the opportunity for the Volkswagen group in the autonomous space is also there in the us. And as I said, I think answers are different. Technology is to a certain degree, it’s the same. It can be adopted to the local requirements and adjusted. And that’s exactly what we do within the Volkswagen group. And MOIA is growing and it’s growing in its footprint. And that’s why we have, I would say a company within Volkswagen Group is A-D-M-T-L-L-C in the US market, which is currently helping us to bring our technology into the local market as their business.

Sascha Meyer ([00:59:49]):

And for this, there is the partnership with MOIA with Uber where MOIA is providing the solution for the autonomous bus to integrate within the Uber platform. And for that the colleagues in the US together with Uber have decided for the Los Angeles market for the first place of deployment. It’s a huge opportunity. It’s the second largest dry hail market in the US So I think it’s an obvious choice. Decent weather conditions, so very favorable conditions and we are working together with our partners in the US to deploy the vehicles by 2026 and then pick up operation by 2027.

Jaspal Singh ([01:00:41]):

And there are two major events happening in Los Angeles, the FIFA next year, seven, six games, and then we have Olympics 2028. So I think MOIA will play an important role in 2028 when the Olympics will be happening in the city. And why I call MOIA as a startup, like you said, you love technology. For me, I love innovation. So any company which is innovative or doing something interesting, I feel they’re still startup. I don’t want for me, Shopify, Uber, they are still like a startup because they are building something creative and unique. Even though like you mentioned, it’s outgrown, it’s now completing 12 million rides and all. So I don’t put you as a small startup, but it’s an innovative company. So I want to use that word.

Now this is my last question is autonomous mobility is here. You must have tried vehicle in different parts of the world. I have seen this. So for me, technology is there, like you mentioned, it’s only the application and the commercial model in the business model need to be worked out. Why? What is the most important piece of advice would you give to the city leader? Thinking about adopting the large scale AV services or those who are not even doing that right now? What is the biggest advice you will give it to these people?

Sascha Meyer   ([01:02:02]):

Yeah, I think first collaboration is essential to shaping the future of mobility. So you should be wise on choosing the players that you work with. Do they provide you with the interfaces, with the data, with the degree of control that you need and that you deserve. I think the second aspect is don’t wait for AVs to miraculously come to your city and be able to be tendered. I think you need to create a vision. You need also to think about how you’re going to fund the implementation of davs, what is the long-term game, and have a strategy and a clear idea on how to get things going so you don’t have to start from the scratch and reinvent the wheel. And I think that’s also important in the transit industry, there’s a little tendency to overburden new technology with so many industry specific requirements that at the end of the day you can’t get going because nitty little gritty detail is not solved or the handle does not the right color and I think there we need an openness to say, okay, it’s not where we are, it’s not where we want it to be, but it’s where we are and let’s work towards the ultimate goal.

Sascha Meyer ([01:03:29]):

But accept that, as I said in the beginning, to sell. Your phone does not fit in your pocket. It might fit in the trunk of your car, but still get going because that’s what we need to have to have clear signals from the public transit industry that there’s interest and that the adoption is wanted and they drive it.

Jaspal Singh ([01:03:50]):

These are very important point, and I love what you said. Each agency should have an AV team within their company, even though if they’re not doing it, but they need to start learning and they should not keep waiting it to appear one day in their city because once it’ll appear, it’ll be very difficult to stop and integrate. They should be in our driver’s seat and they can actually start collaborating much before now. Start discussing and rethinking about what are the underutilized route I can use and provide some kind of a service which is more suitable and cheaper rather than having a full fleet fixed line service, which is not profitable.

Thank you. I mean all these are really great point and it’s great to see when I was in Hamburg, how MOIA is working with City of Hamburg, fully integrated and also now how you’re taking the company out and expanding internationally US will be an interesting place because like you said, the European public transport is very established and us we have a different approach, but LA will be a good market. So I’m looking forward and wish you good luck with that.

Generally we end this podcast to ask some rapid fire personal question round and idea is to learn a little bit more about you and to know more about you as a person. So once you’re ready, I’ll fire my discussion to you.

Sascha Meyer   ([01:05:17]):

I’m ready.

Jaspal Singh ([01:05:18]):

Okay. So now you already, like you mentioned a little bit about the first question. So if you’re not in a transit technology or I would say the bass player, what other profession you would have selected, but I know if I ask you transport technology would’ve said I would be a base player, but I’ve say not a base player. What other profession you would’ve selected?

Sascha Meyer   ([01:05:41]):

I would say a sailing instructor. I love sailing. Yes.

Jaspal Singh ([01:05:48]):

I love that. So as a leader, you want people to move into the right direction. So that’s what you’re doing right now.

Sascha Meyer   ([01:05:56]):

Sailing the company with uncertain environmental conditions

 

Jaspal Singh ([01:06:01]):

With a high tide, low tide and other thing. Now, I know you may be biased because Hamburg is a beautiful city, but which is your favorite city in the world and why?

Sascha Meyer   ([01:06:11]):

It’s like my preferences are sailing, cycling and food and so I would say it’s Copenhagen, Vancouver, and Osaka.

Jaspal Singh ([01:06:22]):

Vancouver is a great choice and unique answer. Copenhagen and Osaka. Yeah. All these are beautiful places. Any favorite book or movie you recommend?

Sascha Meyer   ([01:06:34]):

One book that sticks with me is in the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike because it tells a great story of decades of families and how single decisions and beliefs can change the faith of future generation. And it’s how I see what we do in the autonomous mobility. It’s about the decisions that we take today that will define how my kids travel.

Jaspal Singh ([01:06:58]):

That’s interesting. It will be my to read list In the beauty of Lilly, I agree. When you change one piece, it can have a snowball effect and can create a huge shift generation later. Now, what one thing do you wish you should have learned early in life?

Sascha Meyer   ([01:07:22]):

I would say don’t wait for the future. Do it today. So a bit like carpet, but that’s what I learned both a private life in business. Just go for it and don’t wait for something that might be better around the next corner. Just use the opportunities that you have and make the best out of it.

Jaspal Singh ([01:07:39]):

Just build it today. Don’t wait for perfection. Perfection is enemy of the getting thing done. Now, this is my last question. If you can change one thing in life, what would it be?

Sascha Meyer   ([01:07:51]):

Invent fusion power because I think having a real sustainable source of power all over the world will create so much peace and solve a lot of problems. It will create new ones for sure, but that’s how humans are. But I think from my perspective, it could be great for everyone.

Jaspal Singh ([01:08:12]):

Yeah, I agree. And power the next oil. I would say even more important than oil. So if the power will play, everything around our life is run by power. Our vehicle, our life, our fridge, our stove, our house, everything is with power and probably the world will be much more peaceful space with fusion power. Great.

Thank you so much Sascha. I really enjoyed this conversation, a lot of learning. Thank you for sharing all these feedback. The biggest takeaway is don’t teach to my kids, teach them something else. But I think all these conversation I really enjoyed and I really feel that all the listener will really find it and see these interesting perspective you shared about autonomous vehicle, about the mobility as well as about the life. Thank you for sharing that.

Sascha Meyer   ([01:09:03]):

Thanks, Jaspal, been a pleasure.

Jaspal Singh ([01:09:05]):

Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, please don’t forget to give us a five star rating as it’ll help us to spread our word. If you have any feedback or suggestion for this podcast, please feel free to reach out to us at info@moblity-innovators.com. I look forward to see you next time. Thank you.