Published thinking
A curated collection of KM Electron posts and papers on sourcing the right vehicles and building effective EV distribution in Europe.
Why Europe should protect individual mobility instead of defending the car as we know it - and how honest sourcing and distribution decisions will shape the outcome.
That sounds unfair. But look at where Europe's most interesting mobility decisions have been made. Norway has no car industry to speak of. Almost every new car sold there is now electric. The Netherlands has no big carmaker either.…
My bet is the one in the middle. But its biggest opponent isn't a competitor. I recently heard more about LINKTOUR Automotive, a new Chinese entrant in France's "voiture sans permis" market. Its Alumi has an aluminium body, won the Red…
It's a comfortable story. It is also wrong. I keep hearing it, from newspaper columnists to former colleagues. The numbers tell a different story. In the second quarter of this year, China sales at Volkswagen Group, Mercedes-Benz AG, BMW…
Yesterday Geely agreed to buy 30 per cent of Nio Power, Nio's battery-swapping business, in a deal worth more than two billion dollars. Two competitors, sharing one infrastructure. Nio already runs close to 4,000 swap stations in China and…
Yesterday I drove the A8 towards Salzburg and stopped at Irschenberg. The chargers there deliver 150 kW. Not megawatts. And the place was packed, both at the chargers and next door at DINZLER Kaffeerösterei AG, the coffee roaster and…
Last week's post on agency reached over 100,000 people. The comments were the best part - genuine practitioners, on both sides, arguing from experience. Several told me it works, and named Mercedes-Benz AG India, MINI , Volvo Cars, Austria…
Both are betting on the agency model - BMW Group converting its own network, Xiaomi Technology entering Europe with an agency model run through eight dealer groups it just signed. Everyone is embracing agency. Almost nobody has made it…
It cannot postpone the industrial reality: China produced nearly three quarters of the world’s electric cars in 2025. That is why I wrote this short manifesto. I ran Volvo Cars in China and later led Aiways’ expansion outside China, where I…
Read insightIn the first half of 2026, the Kia Europe PV5 - Kia's first van, ever - took 37% of Europe's small electric van market. It outsold Ford Motor Company, Mercedes-Benz AG, Renault Group and Stellantis, companies that have built vans for the…
10% today, maybe 12 next year, inching up for a decade. I think that is exactly wrong. The van will not switch slowly. It will switch all at once. See the success of Hyundai Motor Company. Here is why commercial vehicles behave differently…
Expect a lot of talk about electric vans. Here is the number that talk will mostly avoid. Electric vans are about 10% of new light commercial vehicles in Europe. Passenger cars are at 20%. The van is running years behind the car - and the…
It is happening in the vehicles most carmakers refuse to build. Quadricycles - the L6 and L7 category, the Citroen Ami and its cousins - are electrifying faster than any other segment on the continent. And almost nobody in the mainstream…
They are the professionals. The high-mileage drivers. The fleets. The logic is simple, and it is the part the consumer debate keeps missing. The saving from driving electric is the same per kilometre for everyone - but the more kilometres…
Over the next twenty years, that gap turns into a chasm. Today, on European averages, 100 kilometres costs roughly 11 to 12 euros in a petrol car and around 6 in an electric one. Two forces are about to pull those numbers apart.…
It is the most common objection to electric cars. It is also, on the numbers, simply wrong - and the size of the error is worth seeing. If every passenger car in Europe eventually went electric, total electricity demand would rise by…
The claim is that Chinese electric cars are not just cheaper, but better - and that European makers have been left behind for good. I would separate that into two very different questions, because collapsing them leads to bad decisions. Is…
Later than almost anyone expects. And the reason is the same slow-moving stock I wrote about earlier this week. Fuel is not burned by the cars we sell. It is burned by the cars on the road - and that fleet turns over slowly. So even with…
Here is why that number should worry anyone building charging infrastructure. At 4% of the fleet, the drivers without a home charger are a rounding error. Most early EV owners have a driveway, a wallbox, a garage. The charging problem…
This year, roughly one in five new cars sold in Europe is fully electric. The headlines call it the tipping point, the moment the transition became unstoppable. But "20% of new cars" and "20% of cars on the road" are completely different…
If you read that quickly, the story writes itself: China is unstoppable, Europe is finished. Look closer, and the story falls apart. In the very same data, Tesla's European sales rose 60%, and the single best-selling electric model was not…
It buys a spreadsheet. For a fleet like that, total cost of ownership is the whole decision: energy, uptime, maintenance, financing, and what the vehicle is worth when it comes back. Emotion does not enter it. And on a high-utilisation…
A purpose-built vehicle, no steering wheel, no pedals. The technology worked well enough that a regulator let it carry paying passengers. The interesting part was not the car. It was what Zoox's CEO, Aicha Evans, said about the moment.…
It is a good list. Slightly provocative, deliberately so, and most people posting confident takes would fail it. I would pass some and, honestly, not all. But here is what struck me. Every question tests how well you know the car. Not one…
Read insight
A few days ago I argued that Europe has solved the charging problem drivers see on holiday, and barely started on the one city dwellers face on a Tuesday night. Several people asked the obvious next question: so what actually fixes it?…
On the road this week, Aurelien de Meaux shared a map of the charging around Tours: a forest of chargers, most of them sitting free in early August. His read - there are plenty of chargers, the infrastructure is running ahead of the cars.…
Two days ago, Bolt CEO Markus Villig wrote that DeepSeek and Kimi (Moonshot AI) had demonstrated how Chinese open-source laboratories are commoditising frontier AI, adding: “Most people don’t realise that self-driving cars are next.” I…
My esteemed friend Beatrix C. Keim recently wrote something that stayed with me: “There is no longer one global automotive playbook.” I think this is one of the most important observations in the current automotive debate. China has…
I recently came across the argument that perhaps Europe should simply accept that the automotive industry belongs elsewhere. After all, we moved on from coal mining. We moved on from steel. We moved on from telephone switches. Perhaps it's…
The real infrastructure problem is not charging speed. It is access. Millions of Europeans live in cities without private parking or home charging. They do not need one megawatt. They need a reliable, reasonably priced charger near their…
Today, that argument is not yet convincing for everyone. Purchase prices remain high, charging can be expensive, and the infrastructure is still not satisfactory for all drivers. But let us consider a scenario, not a forecast. Assume that…
I drove to visit my mother, a route I know in my sleep and quite enjoy due to the winding road and the motorway in between. Two and a half hours there. Two and a half hours back. Normally, I enjoy driving. It's one of the reasons I still…
I found this Chinese L6 vehicle in Erpfingen, a small village in southern Germany, close to my hometown. Not Shanghai. Not Shenzhen. Not Munich. Erpfingen, a conservative village in a area where everybody speaks Schäbisch, a dialect not…
Read insightThey had engineers who understood the technology. They had product managers who understood the market. They had executives who knew exactly what the competition was doing. Yet many of them still failed. That was the first thought that…
Not because they have solved every problem. But because they seem willing to accept something that much of the industry still struggles to admit. Building an affordable electric vehicle is no longer a purely national exercise. The…
I think we overlook something much more valuable. Europe has spent decades building an aftersales ecosystem that customers trust. Dealer networks, fleet management, insurance, workshops, certified used-car programmes and residual-value…
The answer is no. The vehicle had only been converted about a week earlier and is currently being parameterised. It will continue to learn over the coming days before it could technically operate without a driver. Whether it actually does…
Every time I hear that expression, I think we start the discussion from the wrong place. A microcar sounds like a small version of a normal car. Something compromised. Something that did not quite make it. But that is not what I saw when I…
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. The hardware still works perfectly. The screen lights up, the buttons respond and it would probably continue doing its job for years. The problem is much simpler. I cannot find the original…
One story caught my attention today. ZF Friedrichshafen AG, a company that is already under enormous pressure, reportedly had to move production to other locations after weekend work was rejected by the works council. Whether one agrees…
When Volkswagen introduced Ello, much of the discussion focused on timing. A company talking about AI-supported wellbeing while simultaneously discussing major restructuring inevitably raises eyebrows. I understand that reaction. But after…
That was one of the most frequent comments after I wrote about small urban vehicles (and I admit the picture here is not a modern version of such a vehicle). It is a perfectly understandable reaction. Nobody wants to compromise on safety.…
Several people asked me after my last post whether the autonomous vehicle I rode in Munich was actually driverless. It wasn't. There was still a safety driver behind the wheel and the company is called Autobrains Technologies, who is…
One thing caught my attention this week. Electra, one of Europe's fastest-growing charging operators, is recruiting heavily in Germany with the help of one of their co-founders, Julien Belliato. I had the opportunity to get to know the…
After reports of up to 120,000 job cuts, Volkswagen Group's management is now talking about finding a "smarter solution" to the restructuring. I sincerely hope there is one. But I also hope it does not mean asking taxpayers to finance…
Not as a wellbeing chatbot. But as the beginning of something Volkswagen may urgently need: a scalable coaching approach, boosted by AI, but still led by humans. In a transformation of this scale, emotional support is not a soft topic. It…
And that is exactly why it was interesting. It was carrying empty water and beer crates back to a store. Nothing glamorous. No concept-car theatre. No mobility conference language. Just a small vehicle doing useful work in real life. That…
And my main impression was not that this technology is far away. My impression was the opposite. This could become real faster than many people in Europe still assume at scale, not as an experiment - maybe already next year? What struck me…
In normal times, this might look like a harmless employee-support initiative. But these are not normal times. Volkswagen is discussing one of the most difficult transformations in its history: overcapacity, cost pressure, China, software,…
Today, the interesting part: there appears to be a concrete business model behind it. Corsica did not wait for the used-BEV market to develop naturally. It helped create one. A rental company that puts a large share of BEVs into its fleet…
IG Metall is mobilising across VW sites in Germany while deeper restructuring is being discussed. I understand why unions defend workers. That is their role. But there is a difference between defending people and defending structures that…
DAT Deutsche Automobil Treuhand reports that residual values for Chinese BEVs and PHEVs in Germany fell from 61% of original list price at the start of 2024 to 47% in April 2026. That is not a side issue. It goes straight to the heart of…
They still look unusual. In a city shaped by BMW Group, AUDI AG and Mercedes-Benz AG, a small 45 km/h vehicle can easily be dismissed as a toy. I think that would be a mistake. These vehicles are not trying to replace every car. They are…
At the Reuters Events: Automotive Europe conference, Alfredo Altavilla made a strong case for BYD’s European ambitions. Let me paint the full picture of what this could mean if we take the ambition seriously. This is not a forecast. It is…
Corsica has one of the highest BEV shares in the French rolling car parc. According to Roole Data, electric cars account for 5.3% of the car parc in Corsica, compared with 3.1% for France overall. Germany, for comparison, is at around 4.1%…
Most people seemed to think they are. I am less sure. Not because European OEMs have no strengths. They clearly do. They have brands, engineering depth, dealer networks, service structures, fleet relationships, leasing expertise and…
One of the most interesting moments was the interview with Alfredo Altavilla, Special Advisor for the European Market at BYD. His message was uncomfortable in exactly the right way: The Chinese wave will come. Import duties will not stop…
It is one visible front in a much bigger European problem. In a recent Süddeutsche Zeitung interview, Niall Ferguson of Stanford University and Moritz Schularick of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy warned that if Europe does not…
Not small premium cars. Not over-engineered city SUVs. Not vehicles that try to do everything for everyone. Just small cars. Simple. Light. Affordable. Useful. Designed around real life. Look at the old Fiat cinquecento logic: limited…
It is short of change capacity. And I say that as someone who has spent years in my industry - automotive, mobility, and the systems around it. Right now, this is no longer abstract. When Oliver Blume openly signals that Volkswagen Group…
It reminded me of a discussion I had almost 10 years ago with ENGIE about fast charging for fleets in Germany. The idea was right then. We were just too early. The vehicles were not there yet. The operating model was not there yet. Now…
And looking at their operation, the question is actually not that complicated: Could they switch a large part of that fleet to electric? Yes, they probably could. Urban routes. Predictable usage. Vehicles back every day. Interestingly,…
While Volkswagen Group and BMW Group have warned about the consequences of tariffs, the European Commission is still being lobbied hard by an industry that should be asking itself a more uncomfortable question: Why are Chinese EVs often so…
Renault Group and Stellantis are now effectively telling Europe that they need a special framework to make small electric cars viable again. That is not a sign of industrial strength. It is an admission of how far Europe has drifted away…
The real bottleneck in urban EV adoption is often not the vehicle. It is energy access that is fast enough, reliable enough, and available exactly when work depends on it. That is why the E-lutetia / E-Motum model is so interesting. This…