Season 7, Post 4: Driving forward, slowly
Note for readers: for those who missed it, have no doubt, DeepSeek’s large language model is a big deal. Marc Andreessen of the eponymous venture capital firm, describes it as “AI’s Sputnik moment.” We concur but will not address the topic in any further detail here owing to the significant volume of column inches that have already occurred elsewhere. Suffice to say that the barriers to entry for competing in the AI space are falling fast. We have argued elsewhere that AI will become a public good similar to electricity over time. This process is only speeding up. More detailed views on this topic are available on request – please just ask. Now onto something very different…
Oslo and Las Vegas would appear to share little in common. They are located over 8,000km apart on different continents. The capital of Norway is full of beautiful architecture, culture and history. The culture in Vegas is of a rather different kind. Yet both cities (which coincidentally have similar sized populations) throw in an interesting light on what the future of driving might look like.
Go anywhere in Norway, not just Oslo, and the sight on a car powered by an internal combustion engine is increasingly rare. Last year, the number of electric cars on Norway’s roads exceeded those powered by petrol for the first time. The country has said that it is aiming to become the first nation globally to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, a landmark it expects to reach by the end of this year. Contrast this with the US, where electric vehicle sales accounted for just 8% new car registrations in 2024.
Every year Las Vegas plays host to the Consumer Electronics Show, the largest tradeshow of its kind. Your author has attended (most recently, in the pre-Blog era of 2017) and it is certainly an experience. Among the gadgets on display at 2025’s event were no shortage of autonomous cars. No less a luminary than NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang observed that “it is very, very clear that autonomous vehicles have finally arrived.”McKinsey consultants believe support Jensen’s assessment: they believe that autonomous driving could create $300-400bn of revenues in a decade’s time.
If you’re visiting Vegas, then it’s easy to get excited about autonomous driving. The same could be said for electric vehicles in Oslo. Success stories are location specific. Autonomous vehicles work best in flat, relatively small and simple grid-like cities such as Vegas. When there are a greater number of unpredictable variables, then problems arise. Beyond safety issues, advocates may also want to consider the problems related to liability (should autonomous vehicles be involved in accidents) and hackability. Similarly, in Norway the electric vehicle revolution has been enabled by a dedicated long-term strategy. Owners of fossil fuel vehicles have consistently been hit with higher taxes and registration fees. At the same time, VAT and import duties were scrapped for low-emissions cars. Electric vehicles benefit from free parking and discounted road tolls too in Norway. Few other countries have had the same drive – no pun intended – as Norway in implementing such an approach. The car of the future may therefore still be some time in arriving.
28 January 2025
The above does not constitute investment advice and is the sole opinion of the author at the time of publication. Past performance is no guide to future performance and the value of investments and income from them can fall as well as rise.
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Alex Gunz, Fund Manager
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