Session One

The Great EV Crisis?

The seemingly ineluctable rise of the EV may have reached an inflection point. For many Western carmakers, EV sales are stalling, profits remain distant, and stock market valuations are tumbling. Just as Western consumers demand cheaper EVs, deglobalisation increases structural costs, China turns its attention to export markets, and terrifying new foes such as Foxconn, Huawei and Xiaomi enter the fray. But was a correction and rationalisation always inevitable? Are some of the present sales woes just cyclical? Can the big OEMs and at least some of the start-ups power through the gloom to mass scale and profitability? And what qualities will define the winners?

Speaker

Doug Field, Chief Officer, EVs and Digital Systems, Ford
Peter Rawlinson, CTO and CEO, Lucid Motors

Keynote

The role of government

With higher tariffs and trade wars looming, supply chains being reshored and the growing importance of critical mineral resources and EV manufacturing to economic security, the car industry is in the geopolitical crosshairs like never before. But what do leading Western politicians actually think? Should they be welcoming cheap Chinese EVs to help meet their climate obligations, or increasing tariffs on them to protect their domestic EV makers, both old and new? With flatlining sales and profits hard to come by, should legislators have given EVs such a strong regulatory push? Can legislators in Europe and the UK ever hope to compete with the subsidies - official and otherwise - being lavished on their EV and battery makers by the US and China? And can a former very senior European leader enlighten us on all these issues now that he is freed from the restrictions of office?

Speaker

Jose Manuel Barroso, Former President of the European Commission and Chairman and Non-Executive Director of Goldman Sachs

Session TWO

The new optimism on autonomy

We've seen optimism and enthusiasm for self-driving cars wax and wane since Nucleus was first convened, with even the biggest and best-funded tech firms and carmakers scaling back their ambitions, lengthening their horizons, changing tack or retiring defeated. AI is having a transformative and sometimes arguably corrosive effect on other areas of the economy and public life, but while some worry about AI becoming super intelligent, the complexity and safety requirements of driving a car on public roads remain at the edge of its abilities. Fundamental differences remain on how to make it work. But with specific applications in robotaxis and trucking now in operation, deals like Wayve's recent $1bn funding round showing greater investor confidence, and apps such as Verne simply buying-in the best third-party self-driving software and focussing instead on the commercials, is the optimism around autonomy finally coming back?

Speaker

Sterling Anderson, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, Aurora
Alex Kendall, Founder and CEO, Wayve
Mate Rimac, Founder and CEO, Rimac Group

Fireside Chat

Kent Masters, CEO, Albemarle

Our new dependence on the minerals required to produce batteries and the environmental and ethical issues around their extraction mean they are front-and-centre for legislators, manufacturers and consumers alike. Tariffs and incentives seek to reshore or friend-shore those supply chains. But with China so dominant in refining capacity, there's a limit to how far and fast the West can decouple, while breaking up efficient global supply chains makes everything more expensive. So has the mobility sector just swapped dependence on OPEC for dependence on the other, sometimes less amenable entities which control critical resources? Are measures such as the Inflation Reduction Act, which will reduce the Chinese-refined content in US batteries, having a significant impact? Are new battery chemistries, which reduce reliance on particularly problematic resources such as cobalt, impacting demand? And what upstream mineral-supply risks might the mobility industry be missing?

Speaker

Kent Masters, CEO, Albemarle

HEADLINE KEYNOTE: SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTERNATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

Speaker