Grayson Brulte: |
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to SAE Tomorrow Today Unplugged. Today's topic is Convenience. Why Convenience? because very simply, the future mobility is on demand, autonomous and convenient. The future of mobility, despite what's been published, it's not shared by default. It's convenient by default. Everything around will be defined by convenience. |
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The future of mobility will be highly personalized. On- to point. Mobility experiences, multi-modal modes of transportation, including but not limited micro mobility. Autonomous vehicles personally owned vehicles. Ridesharing. Consumers like to go where they want point A to point B. They like to use trains. |
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They like to use scooters, they like to use bikes, but what's the glue that holds us all together? Payments without payments that are integrated across the board to make one payment. It's not convenient. Payments are gonna be the glue [00:01:00] that's gonna hold together the future mobility and allow it to be convenient. |
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Private vehicles, why are they selling at record numbers? Why are consumers buying them? They're convenient. How private vehicle allows you to go anywhere you want? Anytime you. You don't have to wait for a friend. You don't have to wait for an Uber. You don't have to wait for a Lyft. You don't have to wait for a taxi. |
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There's no waiting. You get in your car, you turn it on, you go. It's very simple. This is the trend that is gonna affect and impact the future mobility, convenience. Convenience is not only impacting the future mobility, it's impacting a variety of industries. You order something on Amazon comes to your house same day next. |
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That's convenient. It is simple. That's what people want. You want a new pair of sneakers? You go nike.com, you order 'em, you design 'em there in two days. That is convenient. The other thing is when you look at retail, what else is convenient? Pick up. Perhaps you wanna order something from Target or Walmart or here in Florida, [00:02:00] Publix, and you go over there and you arrive at the Target, Walmart or Publix, and you pull up and says, dedicated parking spots, online order pickup. |
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You're right in front why it's convenient, but the truth is it saves Walmart, target, and public's a lot of money without having to pay delivery service. But for you as a consumer who might want to drive to the store and get you right in faster, it's convenient and convenience. In my opinion, it's what's driving electric vehicle sales. |
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They surpassed 10% of all new vehicles. In 2022. That's right. 10% of all new vehicle sales in 2022 globally were electric vehicles. Why? Convenience. Electric vehicles are convenient. They're convenient to drive. Frankly, there are a lot of fun to drive, but as a convenience, as electric vehicle is, there's a problem brewing below the surface that's not talked about a lot. |
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If you look at the majority of EV drivers, you speak to 'em, you look at surveys, you look at. It [00:03:00] comes down to destination charging consumers. They want to charge at home. It might seem easy sometimes buying a charger online, this is outside of a Tesla, takes a week to two weeks to get, okay, that's not too bad cause you can plan for the arrival of your new electric vehicle. |
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However, good luck trying to get an EV electrician to install the charger. It's a pain in the butt. There's no standard insulation process. There's no transparent. You go to Bob's electricity, that'll be $2,000. You go to Jay's electricity, that'll be a thousand dollars. You go to Mary's electricity, it's $2,100. |
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Oh, okay. What's the difference? That's just what they think the market can bear. What we really need to accelerate the growth of electric vehicles, which I'm an EV owner and I'm a proud EV owner, and I thoroughly enjoy driving it. We need transparency around the installation process of EV Chargers at home. |
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Perhaps there's a standard installation process where if you're gonna put in a Tesla wall charger, Tesla mandates the price at X because the service [00:04:00] this, or perhaps blink mandates at this, or ChargePoint mandates it at that. There has to be standards in transparency around home charging. It's an issue that we have to tackle. |
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Or we're gonna lose the convenience factor of EVs. If we want EVs to surpass 20% of all vehicles sold globally, we have to figure out home charging. And on the other aspect of home charging, if you look at it more closely or deeper, it's destination charging. And I'm gonna give you a personal example. |
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I left my house, I was charged about 74% and drove from South. Up to Disney World. I got there with roughly 4% of the battery left. I checked into the hotel and I said to the valet, Hey, can you charge my EV for me? Yeah, no problem. We'll go plug it in for you. Not a problem. And enjoy your time at Disney World. |
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Every electric vehicle has a connected app. So I check the app. Oh, this is great. Maybe 80% in 30 minutes or so. Not so fast. Not so fast. This was something they plug the charger in at 10:30 AM [00:05:00] Eastern Standard Time. I repeat 10:30 AM Eastern Standard time. I get an alert on my phone. |
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That charging will be completed at 3:30 AM the next day. I repeat 3:30 AM the next day. That's roughly 17 hours to charge the battery. Keep in mind I wanted to go to a hundred percent so I could ensure with traffic or if I put the air conditioner on or charge some cell phones or iPads in the. I can make it home. |
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17 hours to charge a vehicle not practical, the destination. And I want, I wanna put this into more context here. This particular hotel I stayed at Disney World has 443 rooms. That's a lot of people going to the happiest place on earth. Now let's run some Matthew. Let's say 50 guests arrived with an electric vehicle. |
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There was only two chargers, level one Chargers, 17 hours to charge from 4% to a hundred percent. What would happen? How would the valet manage the situation of charging the vehicles? It would be a problem. There would be a lot of complaining going on, possibly a [00:06:00] lot of dead batteries going on, but more important, in my humble opinion, it would've a negative impact on the overall EV experience, cuz it would lead to anxiety. |
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Oh no, am I gonna be able to go home after a wonderful week at Disney World? Is the battery gonna be charged? Oh no. Do I have to call roadside a service? Whoa, what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? It would create anxiety if we want destination charging to scale, especially at hotels. And if you look at Disney World, one of the most visited places in the world, a lot of individuals travel or they rent cars from MCO, which is the airport. As a society, to get individuals to adapt to EVs, we have to get over anxiety. We cannot have a family of four, family of five, a family of six, driving to Disney World in an electric vehicle from South Florida or North Florida for that matter. |
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Worried about range anxiety, charging anxiety, which I believe charging anxiety is the new range. Anxiety, cuz EVs will not scale. They'll go back. The gas car, that's very simple. They'll go back to [00:07:00] the gas car. But if we can solve destination charging, where you pull up that hotel, which I stated earlier, is 443 rooms. |
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Currently it only has two chargers. Imagine you've had 50 chargers. They were level two chargers, F 50 amp. Okay, that was great. Or perhaps it, it had a level three charger. Now we're really cooking. Now we're doing good. But to get there, you have to have the infrastructure. It's convenience that we're starting to see emerge in the world of autonomy. |
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Autonomy's gonna be defined by convenience, just the same way that electrification of electric vehicles is being defined by convenience. And recently I attended CES in Las Vegas and this year, in my personal opinion, I don't have data or stats to back. It felt lighter than the pre-covid years. However, the technology was there, CES, the technology was there, and they did a really great job. |
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And I wanna highlight a few of these technologies that I saw at CES here. John Deere showcased the full autonomous R tractor. The tractor. It was beautiful. It was [00:08:00] huge. It was a piece of art, frankly. Not only was it a piece of art, was it beautifully designed? Was it beautifully showcased? Go, Go team, dear on the way that you presented it at CES, but most important, that eight R Tracker is gonna have a real world impact for farmers around the world. |
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It's gonna allow them to scale their farming operations with a global labor shortage and a pending recession. And I wanna highlight the pen, the pending recession. Economists are all over the map on a potential, I'll repeat a potential recession. I'm not making a forecast here, as Howard Marks famously says, vote Tree capital. |
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But I wanna point to some data here. Economist at Goldman Sachs are forecasting the chance of a recession at 35%. All right, Pete. Forecasting at 35% chance while the Bloomberg consensus is a 67% chance, that's a 32% swing. Where's it gonna be? That's how Mark said, as I said earlier, I'm not making a forecast, but Deere, they did. |
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They did great. The eight R tractor wasn't there for hype. It wasn't there to have the CES moment. Let's get covered in [00:09:00] Tech Crunch. Let's get covered in the verge. Let's see. Let's tell investors that Deere's a tech company. No. That might be the headlines, but let's dive into the data here. |
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It's part of John Deere's overall strategy. The Mr. John May, who's CEO of Deere, and Mr. Josh Jepsen, who's CFO of. In a September 22, 2022 analyst meeting with JP Morgan, Mr. Jepson and Mr. May stated the following, which I think is really important to highlight here. Every tractor going forward will be autonomous ready when necessary. |
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Considering infrastructure, that is a very bold statement from Mr. May and Mr. Jepson, and it validates what Deere showed, and Cs with the eight R tractor. Autonomy is a business for Deere. It's a real business. It's a business that will pay dividends for Deere shareholders and farmers around the world. It's a win. |
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Business, the tractor will be profitable for farmers. The tractor will be profitable for Deere shareholders. It's simple. It's a win-win situation. And oh, by the way, it's convenient. Deere's gonna not have to worry about the [00:10:00] labor issue on farms. It's a very convenient way for farmers around the world to scale. |
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And on previous episodes of SAE Tomorrow Today, we've been absolutely honored. I've been joined by several individuals of the John Deere team. We even had the pleasure of being joined by Igino Cafiero and Aubrey Donnellan, founders of Bear Flag Robotics, on episode 51 prior to their acquisition of John Deere in August of 2021 with SAE Tomorrow Today. |
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Today we try and keep our listeners in front of the trends that are happening, things that we find interesting, things that we think are gonna have an impact on the global economy, and frankly, just to tell really great stories. And then on the Deere side, we had Al Savage, manager of the StarFire Network at John Deere on episode 60. |
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Hey Al. And we had Joseph Leifer, senior product manager for Autonomy, John Deere Intelligence Solutions Group. On episode 1 0 1, Al told the story of the Star Fire Network GPS and how Deere was the first commercial company to use GPS. Joseph told the story about Deere with autonomy. [00:11:00] As part of my job as the host of SAE Tomorrow Today, I try and keep you the listeners ahead of the curve and inform on issues that are impacting the future of autonomy and mobility. |
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And as I've said to in Gino and Al and Joseph privately, nothing runs like an autonomous deer. Nothing runs like an autonomous deer. Nothing moves earth better than a hundred ton Cat 77 7 autonomous truck. Sorry folks. Not to be confused with a 77 Boeing. It's a hundred ton Cat 77 autonomous truck. |
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Very similar to Deere Cats creating value for their customers. They're providing large scale autonomous trucks and some of their most remote minds in the world. They're doing it In Western Australia. Western Australia faces issues. The miners fly in for two weeks. They go home for two weeks, they fly in for two weeks, they go home for two weeks. |
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The issue is when you look at, sometimes they go home for two weeks. They don't come back, repeat, they go home for two weeks, they don't come back. It's a very hard lifestyle. It's a very tough lifestyle. And Caterpillar has [00:12:00] developed the autonomous trucks, which are allowing these minors to scale. And you can make the argument in some cases that autonomous mining could be considered a national security issue. |
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Now I wanna highlight this really interesting piece from Bloomberg Intelligence on Lithium here and Bloomberg Intelligence, quote unquote stated the. Batteries needed for electric vehicles could be the largest demand driver for lithium over at least the next decade. The electrification megatrend, which notably includes the transition to EVs and away from traditional ice vehicles, that's internal combustion engine vehicles, has completely altered the demand trajectory of lithium, a critical component and secondary battery production. |
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Yeah, we don't have an electric future without lithium mining. It's tough. But what does the CAT autonomous truck do to hold lithium on the mines? It makes it convenient, it makes it scalable, and it makes electrification a reality. On episode 57 of SA Tomorrow, today we had Michael C. Murphy, Chief Engineer at Caterpillar. |
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Mr. Murphy came on to discuss CAT and [00:13:00] their autonomous truck operations. It was a fascinating conversation. Mr. Murphy. You really don't understand the true depth of what CAP'S doing until you listen to that episode. Furthermore, CAT operates at the largest fleet of autonomous vehicles in the world. Way to go. |
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Team Cat. Cat operations are vast. They're developing the technology, they're doing great things. They're scaling autonomous vehicles. They're not the only player in town. Startups are also working on autonomous trucks for the mining industry as well. On episode 1 39 of SAE Tomorrow. Today we are honored to welcome Bje Halder, founder and CEO of Safe Ai Bje came on. |
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He discussed retrofitting heavy duty vehicles and autonomous technology to enable safer, more productive and more cost effective work. Have Caterpillar of the incumbent doing really great work and you have Bje with safe AI doing really great work. Oh, by the way, BJE was an engineer or cat back in the day, so I think he knows the thing or two. |
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And plus he's a really wonderful, smart gentleman. What does autonomous mining operations allow? It's very simple. It allows more [00:14:00] productivity and more cost efficient work. . This is a convenience overall. Moving outta the mines. Looking at the business models of autonomy, they're rapidly shifting to a transportation service model. |
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In the future, there's gonna be companies, cruise Waymo, emotional, for example, on the passenger side. You're not gonna own the vehicle, you're gonna either buy a subscription or are you gonna pay for a ride to, to move you from point A to point B. And that's the humans. And on the heavy duty truck side, we're starting to. |
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A model evolve of autonomous transport, or you'll pay for the goods to move from point A to point B, or if you're a shipper or carrier, you're gonna subscribe to the truck. It's gonna come. You could pay for the driver, pay for the mileage. We could put it might sound costly now. You don't have to lay out $250,000 for the truck, $300,000 for trucker with all the equipment, $500,000 for the truck. |
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You'll simply pay a subs. Asset light, yes, but balance sheet light, you can build it into your models. You can build it into your cost to shift [00:15:00] things. This is a model that's being pioneered by Volvo Autonomous Solutions. They're developing their transport as a service model. Volvo, in my humble opinion, is a leader in autonomy. |
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They are a company with incredible leadership that's not properly valued. They have the partnership with Aurora for the virtual driver that's gonna, that's gonna run on the Volvo trucks. And I'm hearing that Volvo has other partnerships coming down the line. Can't confirm anything, but I'm hearing it. |
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And I have a sneaking suspicion Volvo's gonna play a very large role in the future of autonomous trucking. The model that Volvo Autonomous Solutions is pioneering, is convenient. As we said earlier, it saves money for the trucking companies that have to move goods. And on the trucking side, We have a labor shortage. |
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The American Trucking Associations estimates as of 2022, the truck drivers are short. 78,000 drivers short. an issue. Being short, 78,000 drivers is gonna lead to inflation, is going to lead to higher cost of goods moving it. What [00:16:00] solves the inflation in the supply chain is autonomous trucking. |
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Autonomous technologies will lower inflation. It's very important that we get autonomous te. Into the supply chain because all the benefits of this technology will have for our consumers, it will help to lower the cost of goods. Autonomous trucking is a, I would say, a very favorite topic of mine. It's a topic that we've have covered in great depth on s E tomorrow. |
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Today, we've had the following guests from the autonomous trucking industry on the show, and I'd like to highlight each one of these guests, if you might like to go back and listen to the episodes. Robert Brown, Head of Public & Government Affairs at TuSimple, Robert. Love you, sir, episode 2; Gautam Narang, co-founder and CEO of Gatick, episode 9; Bill Combs, Vice President of Connected Vehicle Strategy and Experimentation at Penske Transport Solutions, episode 27; Andreas Wendel, VP of Engineering at Kodiak Robotics, episode 45; Alex Rodrigues, co-founder and CEO of Embark Trucks, episode 54; Dr. Rainer Muller-Finkeldei, Senior VP of Engineering and Technology, Daimler Truck North America, episode 91; Chuck Price, Chief Product Officer, TuSimple episode 92. As you can see, seven guests out of 140 something episodes. Seven guests have been dedicated to autonomous trucking. Why? Because we feel, I personally feel that autonomous trucking is a future and it's a future that's being built in America, and we're so thankful for the listeners that. |
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Each and every week, and as we highlight the importance of the autonomous trucking industry and SAE Tomorrow Today, the autonomous trucking industry is an industry that will have a positive impact on the US economy, autonomous trucking. We'll create jobs. Autonomous trucking is good for the economy. And looking, let's go down to the local level. |
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We talked about CES a little earlier. Let's go back into CES. There's a lot of talk about CES and how it's changed. Apple's never showed up over the years. Bill Gates used [00:18:00] to go give the Microsoft keynotes and then it was Steve Ballmer and there was a lot of attention paid to consumer electronics. CES's original name was the Consumer Electronics Show. |
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Not so much anymore, in my opinion, to CES's, not the Consumer Electronics Show. It's the most important mobility show in the world. Over 600,000 square feet was dedicated to the future mobility in the West Hall new facility that was built. Every major player around the world in autonomy was there. Every major player in around the world in mobility was there. |
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Every major tier one supplier of the industry was there. Plus there's a lot of people that turned their badge around that were going There were some of the most important. And the mobility world all happened at CES in Las Vegas. When you look at this, why? Because it's the future and CES has the ability to bring different aspects of mobility together. |
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CES years ago, Warner Brothers was there. They started showing what could potentially a autonomous vehicle look like. They had a Warner Brothers [00:19:00] experience in it. They showed Batman. It was really cool. In my opinion, the future mobility will be defined by experience inconveniences. This is what's shown was at CES year and a year out. |
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If you're in this space and you're contemplating maybe I don't need to go to CES, it's consumer Electronics, go to CES. The future is being showcased at CES and it's a really great networking event. Going back on the convenience topic, the boring. Elon Musk, sir. Job well done. You go to CES, normally you sit in traffic. |
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What do you do? You sit in more traffic and after that you sit in more traffic. One year I had to get from the wind to the Mandalay Bay, took me an hour and 30 minutes. It's not convenient. It's frustrating. You can't make it to meetings well, so what does Elon do? He innovates, creates a brand. The boring. |
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There's nothing more boring than sitting in traffic. But he says, no. Ah, I'm gonna go underground. We're gonna build a series of tunnels. We're gonna connect the Las Vegas Convention Center to Resorts world. So I said, okay, I'm [00:20:00] there. I gotta experience some things. I gotta try new things. What's this experience like? |
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Absolutely fantastic. And it was boring. Got in the tunnel, went there, got to resort world. I was there in under two minutes I was able to schedule my day and increase more meetings. And the boring company, they released some data from CES 2023, which I'd like to highlight here, the average ride time and the boring tunnel. |
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It's a resort world under two minutes. Average wait time under 10 seconds. And that's really important to highlight cuz years ago, mark Andreessen said, ride sharing will never scale and take off unless it's there in five. Mr. Andreessen's, right? And Elon's is getting it down to 10 seconds. Let's look at passenger volume. |
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What type of passengers moved? 94,000 total passengers used the tunnels and the tunnel says, don't go to resort world. But overall, 94,000 total passengers used it. There's a hundred thousand attendees, 94,000. So let's just do the math and let's say 60,000. 60% of the attendees used the boring tunnel. |
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10,000 of those passengers went to and from resorts. As I said earlier, there was no traffic jams. [00:21:00] I didn't have to sit in traffic for an hour and a half that time that I had to go to the Mandalay Bay. Even though I was going closer, it would've been probably a 45 minute walk and said it was a sub two minute ride to get to Resorts World. |
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It was easy, it was convenient, and in my opinion, it's a service that should expand to each and every hotel on the. As it's convenient, CES just began the most convenient large scale conference in the world. If the boring company can connect every single hotel to the Las Vegas Convention Center, imagine a CES with no traffic. |
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It's all possible with boring tunnels. It's time to invent the future. As the future and mobility will be convenience. Today is tomorrow. Tomorrow's today and the future is convenience. Have you enjoyed this episode of SE Tomorrow? Unplugged, or have general thoughts? You can reach out to me on Twitter at @gbrulte. |
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Thank you for tuning into SAE Tomorrow Today. Unplugged SAE International makes no [00:22:00] representations as to the accuracy of the information presented in this podcast. The information and opinions are for general information only, SAE International does not endorse, approve, recommend or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this podcast. |