Jamestown BPU Retool ’22 Conference Keynote Speaker John Ellis presents at Northwest Arena (October 19, 2022)

Retool ’22 Climate Tech Conference Keynote speaker John Ellis says exponential change is coming to the automotive industry.

Ellis, a best-selling author, software expert, and former global technologist with Ford Motor company, spoke at the Northwest Arena Wednesday morning. He told the audience that his presentation was intended to provoke.

Ellis said we’ve been in Transportation 1.0, which represents the individually owned vehicle business model with the majority of those vehicles having a combustion-engine. He said we’re now moving into Transportation 2.0, “It’s hallmark characteristics are a shared-vehicle ownership model, autonomy of some form and level, and most important – an electric vehicle.”

Ellis said individual ownership of cars is disappearing in the United States, citing a AAA study that it costs $10,728 a year to own and operate a vehicle and another study in larger markets that showed 66% of car trips are less than seven miles.

He said car sharing in China is booming, where over 150 million residents have a driver’s license but do not have a car, “We have a burgeoning growth over 10% of the economy (in China) that is shared vs. less than 1% here in the U.S. And they’re expecting to grow the sharing. Why is that significant? This past year, China was responsible for 30-something million vehicle units. U.S. used to be at it’s high 17 million and it’s now down to 15.5 and declining. China will serve as an over-sized indicator of where the market goes.”

Ellis said on top of electric vehicles being more efficient than fossil-fuel cars, policy is driving the move to EVs with enacted bans on combustion engines by 2035 by the European Union, China and even here in New York State, “You may say to yourself, ‘Do I really care about the E.U.?’ Well, let me be very, very, very clear. The E.U., specifically Germany, is home to the top three Tier 1’s in the world. If the top three Tier 1’s in the world are forced to become EV Tier 1’s, the auto industry by definition will go EV.”

Ellis said software plays an over-sized role in the change from fossil fuel to electric, saying how Tesla uses software to differentiate its products versus hardware. He referenced a KPMG report that stated by 2030 many of the major automakers won’t exist.

Ellis said exponential change has been seen with adoption of new technology and that people should expect it with transportation.