Vishnu Amble’s Post

I would like to draw your attention to this article written by Gil Lamphere, from April of 2022. Looking at the title you'll assume he's presenting a negative stance on IM, but reading the article you'll notice it presents IM in its current form as underperforming. However Mr. Lamphere presents some interesting points and thoughts of where IM can go. A few quotes from the article, "Strategy 1: Lay new track, dedicated to intermodal. Sign shipper contracts to run eight 200-car trains a day in both directions. Operate a mix of single, double-stack and TOFC. Use the shipper contracts to leverage a separately financed intermodal subsidiary. Price at current rates. Resulting ROE? 20-25%. With the use of leverage, the equity capital commitment is not large relative to cash flow or railroad market capitalization." "Strategy 2: Use “Flexi-PSR.” Run intermodal trains that depart consistently and precisely (e.g. 8 pm, 9 pm, 10 pm, 11 pm, 12 midnight) and arrive consistently and precisely (e.g. 5 am, 6 am, 7 am, 8 am, 9 am) for immediate pickup that speeds to its point of destination on the same day. If a shipper misses the 8 pm departure, they catch the 9 pm. There is little waiting time for pickup. It is a continuous, daily, balanced flow. The trains depart on time, regardless of whether there are 50 cars or 180 cars, because it’s a premium service. When Florida East Coast employed it for several years around 2005, it had an OR of 70, won the UPS on time delivery award twice (99.49% on time arrival) and drove competing truckers (who went 70 mph on a directly parallel I-95 route over the 350-mile stretch) crazy. FEC’s ROIC was high as infrastructure expenditures matched costs. But beware! This strategy will need capex for dedicated new track/sidings to fulfill your on-time reliability promises. It will also need operational flexibility, enough locomotives to match power to variable train lengths, and train and engine crews to run the service." Now that Mr. Lamphere has made it on the board of NS. I wonder if we will see changes to the IM franchise.. Keep your eyes on the horse.. 🐎

While social media seems to be full of schadenfreude around these failures, the important point is that the companies who were supposed to provide us the medium duty and heavy duty EVs are failing due to shortage of batteries. Without commercial EVs we, society at large, cannot electrify transportation, and that is a huge blow to decarbonizing our economy. It’s not just the startups that are failing to make these vehicles. General Motors hasn’t delivered the electric Silverados. Tesla is barely delivering Semis. Buying a fleet of Ford Motor Company F-150s is all but impossible. The underlying layers of these supply chain issues need deeper thought. I won’t pretend to know the answer but I do hope that people at the #DOT and #DOE are thinking long and hard about this. Gabe Klein Schadenfreude is not a strategy. Neither is hope. #ev #batteries #supplychain #electrification #decarbonisation

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ARRIVAL Micro Factory: The documents, the figures in which are estimated, also value Arrival’s intellectual property at £50mn. The company had developed a new, highly automated way of building vehicles using small-scale factories and pre-made body panels, but the system never produced a working vehicle. The first van that the company made using the factory later turned out to have been largely 👉hand-built.👀 Failed electric van start-up Arrival collapsed owing close to £200mn and holding less than £150,000 of cash, insolvency documents show. Many of the company’s assets, including machinery, computer equipment and furniture, are worth a fraction of their original value. These include £84,000-worth of motor vehicles. Source https://lnkd.in/gjw9AitA #IONAXS #CleanMobility #eMobility #ElectricCars  #FutureMobility #Batteries #Automotive  #ElectricVehicles #AutonomousVehicles  #EV #Lithium #Innovation #Sustainability  #Recycling #Future #Energy #Efficiency #Technology #AVEVAI #TomTsogt 🔔👍

Another SPAC EV OEM down. This time Lightning eMotors. “At the time, we needed a couple hundred million dollars to scale. We were in COVID. The markets were very difficult. The capital markets were willing to give us a great valuation. And we were able to get $230 million to scale. We couldn’t have done it any other way.” The bankruptcy of Proterra Inc batteries a few months back has had a very nasty ripple effect through the EV world. Firstly, it took Volta Trucks under a couple months back. Now it's taken under Lightning eMotors, and that's a real shame. Lightning made electrified medium duty vehicles, with a host of good clients. However, they had a nasty habit of picking bad battery suppliers - they previously bought from Romeo Power, another SPAC zombie that was bought by a second SPAC zombie, Nikola Motors. Interestingly, I had a discussion with a Lightning rep back in October who said that they had a secondary battery supplier, but obviously the problems were bigger. This was evidenced by the attempt to raise more cash back in August. It looks like Lightning will now have its assets sold off, per the article, which means it will be no more. This despite the infusion of $230 million in SPAC cash in 2021. Per my post a few days ago, maybe it was better to not go public and remain a private company. Lightning had been around since 2008, so for someone like Tim Reeser (whom I've connected with a few times), 15 years of work is a long time to walk away with nothing. So, I'm feeling for the crew in Loveland. It's a big loss. What are your thoughts on the round of SPAC'd EV OEM bankruptcies? What went wrong? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below #automotive #batteries #climatechange #emobility #electricvehicles #innovation #sustainability

Restraint is helping Vancouver-based medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle designer and manufacturer GreenPower Motor Company Inc. remain a profitable company, unlike many of its peers, according to CEO Fraser Atkinson. Unlike competitors, GreenPower says it is making money on each vehicle sold and is not rushing to fulfill every potential deal. “I think that’s a discipline that most other EV companies didn’t have,” Atkinson said in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada. “We’ve been very mindful of how and where we spend the money. I firmly believe that where we are now with our current business model, we’re in a position where we’re certainly over time improving on our gross profit margins.” To further support its electric vehicle production, GreenPower secured a loan up to $5 million from Export Development Canada. #sustainability #electricvehicles https://lnkd.in/eSHYeZtA

In this article, Aim Transportation Solutions President, Scott Fleming, lends his insight on the trucking industry's post-pandemic stabilization and the benefits of leasing with a partner like Aim to maintain profitability during uncertain times. 🚛 Read the full article here: https://ow.ly/kZwl50S8lUu

Thank you, The New York Times and Peter Eavis, for covering the forthcoming and complicated decarbonizing of California’s port drayage trucking transition. This article covers nicely the complexities, needs, challenges, and opportunities of what will be a huge zero-emission transition. We are increasingly optimistic about getting ahead of this zero-emission transition with our and others growing portfolios of real estate and infrastructure getting into the ground in the coming year(s). It is a critical transition for the thirty-plus thousand California drayage trucks; environmental justice for communities, economic justice for the carriers, and the timing in the rollout of infrastructure all need to work in concert. There will be bumps along the way, but it can and must work for all the stakeholders. The fleet of vehicles and infrastructure Forum Mobility has partnered with Hight Logistics, Inc. on is nearing one hundred thousand miles, and we have seen the hard and good parts of getting this transition moving. The vehicles and infrastructure are working exceptionally well, and we see happy drivers enjoying quiet, economic, clean trucks every day and we are working hard to have a satisfied customer in Rudy Diaz and the Hight team. We are growing the current fleet with Hight and our infrastructure together in 2024 and are excited to continue to watch Hight Logistics grow. I hope that in the coming year, prices and availability of the class 8 trucks manufactured by the OEMs will align with a price-per-kilowatt-hour as have the rest of battery electric vehicles across the market. I predict the availability of trucks will quickly overtake infrastructure as the bottleneck to roll this out. There is a rush to develop and build underway with immense capital going into this market. In the meantime, we are pleased that California Air Resources Board incentives for drayage trucks have more than doubled in the last month and deliver a price per mile that is very competitive. We need this to be economic for the carriers. We’ve said here at Forum Mobility from the get-go that this will be difficult and must work for carriers, communities, and drivers alike. I am optimistic today more than ever that we can make this transition happen, but it will take a lot of folks coming to the table consistently to ensure we are doing it well. Again, thank you Peter Eavis and the The New York Times for highlighting this complicated transition. https://lnkd.in/gYAvSUqU

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🌞🎯 We’re on track to exit our insolvency proceedings by February 29, 2024. 🚀 We're very happy to announce that Sono Motors GmbH’s insolvency plan has been confirmed by the insolvency court.  In addition, the first tranche of the recently announced investment from Yorkville was funded on February 6, 2024.  🤝 New leadership, strong focus: We're proud to announce that Jan Schiermeister and Denis Azhar are the new managing directors of Sono Motors GmbH. Their extensive experience in the mobility sector will help us launch and deliver our core products like the ‘Solar Bus Kit’ 💬 From our managing directors: Jan Schiermeister: “Our Solar Bus Kit is set to reduce energy consumption, costs, and CO2 emissions for buses, addressing a large potential market." Denis Azhar: "We will continue to pioneer solar in mobility, aiming for a world free of fossil fuels. With more than five years of R&D, we believe our ready-to-market products and intellectual property will pave the way for a flourishing future." 🖋️ Demonstrating the demand, we recently signed an agreement with Nova-Papír Zrt – the first reseller for our Solar Bus Kit – with an initial sales target of 81 Kits by the end of 2025. We expect the resale relationship with Nova-Papír Zrt to lead to market entry in Hungary and open up Eastern Europe as a promising potential market for our solar technology. 🔋 This is more than a comeback; it's a leap into a future in which solar mobility is at the forefront. We remain committed to our mission: putting solar on every vehicle to help realize the mobility transition. 🔗 Stay tuned as we embark on this exciting new chapter. For more details, check out our full press release here: https://lnkd.in/dXd-26qq #sonomotors #success #solar #sustainability #futuremobility