No longer is mobility shaped entirely by traditional automotive players. Mobility is becoming a multi-industry topic as innovation across industries disrupts the foundation built by OEMs. The new business opportunities are blurring the lines of traditional industry silos.
Drivers of Disruption was launched by the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility to explore the changing world of mobility. In each episode, we invite thought leaders, industry titans, and disruptors to discuss the latest advancements, current challenges, and potential solutions moving our world forward.
As a prologue, Matias Garibaldi and Allie Medack, co-hosts of Drivers of Disruption, spoke with Philipp Kampshoff, a senior partner at McKinsey and leader of the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, in this brief prologue to discuss the future of mobility and the growth of traditional automakers into adjacent industries. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.
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Podcast transcript
Matías Garibaldi: Hello. Welcome to the first episode of our podcast called Drivers of Disruption. Before we go into the first episode, we want to do a quick introduction on the podcast, your hosts, as well as a sneak peak of the different topics that we’re going to be covering. So the idea of the podcast started as, you know, a really simple concept. We want to create a space where we can explore the changing world of mobility. There’s right now significant changes happening in our society. There is changes in enabling technologies for mobility. There are changes as well in consumer behaviors a lot due to the global pandemic we just had. There’s also changes that we’re seeing to our environment, to our climate, given the ways we’ve moved in the past. So what we want to do is we want to explore how consumers, how business leaders, how governments, other major stakeholders are reacting, acting, leading in the mobility space due to these changes. So mobility is not just the story of how we’re going to move goods and how we’re going to move people and how it’s gonna impact us. But it’s really a story of the people behind that. So the David versus Goliath is kind of the start-ups coming from left field or, you know, the rebels breaking all previous rules, maybe an incumbent that’s redefining itself. It’s also, you know, the pioneer is really ushering a new way that we’re going to move, a new way that we’re going to live. So the point of the podcast is to invite these folks and to talk about mobility. My name is Matías Garibaldi. I’m going to be your co-host. I’m a consultant at McKinsey. The majority of my work is in new business strategies, in the ecosystem of mobility, the ever changing ecosystem of mobility. Before that, I dabbled in venture capital, and then I also worked on electric vehicles at one of the major OEMs. I’m sharing my co-host responsibilities with my colleague and friend Allie Medack. Allie, welcome to the podcast.
So mobility is not just the story of how we’re going to move goods and how we’re going to move people and how it’s gonna impact us. But it’s really a story of the people behind that.
Allie Medack: Thanks, Matías. It’s so good to see you. So, yeah. Hi, everybody. It’s really nice to be here. My name is Allie Medack. And like Matías, I started my background in the industry space and that’s what really piqued my interest on this topic. Mobility, the movement of goods and people is fascinating, right? All the change going on. It’s going to transform every single industry, every single person, everywhere. And so during my time at McKinsey and in my prior life working in industry on autonomous vehicle topics, I’ve now worked in 13 different countries on this topic, and it’s been fascinating to see how different companies, different industries, different cultures are all embracing the future of mobility, as we like to say. So to kick off this inaugural podcast, we have a very special guest with us today, Philipp Kampshoff, who is the founder of McKinsey Center for Future Mobility. Philip, good to see you. Thanks for joining us.
It’s going to transform every single industry, every single person, everywhere.
Philipp Kampshoff: Great to see you. Thanks for having me.
Allie Medack: Absolutely. So, Philipp, we would love for you as our first guest to kick things off. Tell us about the founding of MCFM, its role in the mobility ecosystem and your thoughts on this amazing space.
Philipp Kampshoff: Sure, I’m happy to do so. Yeah, we founded the MCFM, as we call it, the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility about, I would say, seven or eight years ago. And that was a time where a lot of the mobility megatrends were just getting started. You know, we saw some of the first electric vehicle OEMs bring their vehicles to market. The topic around the autonomous driving was picking up, micromobility was sort of picking up. And at that point in time, a lot of our clients approached us and said, Look, how do you think this world is going to change over the next ten years or so? And a lot of our clients, whenever they talk to the tech players, the VCs, the private equity companies and so forth, they felt everybody has a bit of a vested interest, depending on who you are invested in or what’s your primary technology. And they we’re looking for an independent institution that basically looked at the space and said, look, if we bring everything, all the facts on the table that we know about future mobility right now, this is how we think this is going to turn out. And that was basically the founding time of our MCFM.
A lot of our clients approached us and said, ‘Look, how do you think this world is going to change over the next ten years or so?’
Allie Medack: It’s such a fascinating space. And you mentioned a little bit about the past trends you’ve seen. But tell us, in the past five years, what do you think those big defining moments have been? And then I’m going to do the thing that everyone always struggles with, right? Tell us, look into your crystal ball, what does the next five years look like? What are we going to be driving or what will be driving us maybe in 2030?
Philipp Kampshoff: Yeah, we very closely look at sort of inorganic investments in this space. And if you look at the last 5 to 10 years, more than $500 billion have been invested into some of the ACES technologies, as we call it. So ACES stands for Autonomous, Connectivity, Electrification and Smart mobility. Interestingly enough, only a fraction of that inorganic investment came from the traditional automotive industry. More than 90 percent came from the outside world either venture capital, private equity or a lot of the tech players that started to invest into that space. Now, the interesting thing about that is, you know, you can always make the argument that innovation is a function of time, but in reality it’s a function of time, but also the amount of resources that you put against it. And all of this money that came into the mobility space really led to an celebration of all of these ACES trends. Now, I would say in the last five years, the trends that have probably picked up the most and we all have seen it sort of in the commercials that we see on television is clearly electrification. That is one, around the globe, that is probably right now having the most momentum. Certainly connectivity is an important topic as well. Autonomous, I would say, it has its up and down, especially when you think about level four autonomous or true “robo-taxis”. I think until we see them really at scale, it’s still a few years out. And Smart mobility, I would say when you think about some of the e-scooters on the roads that was certainly growing in the last years a lot, I would say the further acceleration during COVID when everybody was trying to be mobile and get around sort of on their own and use less public transport.
Matías Garibaldi: Philipp, you mentioned one thing that really caught my attention. You said that, you know, 90 percent of investments came outside of traditional automotive. So my question for you is this: As the big shifts in enabling technology, the impacts on mobility, on, you know, retail or, you know , other industries, how have the conversations that you’ve had with clients grown from, you know, traditional automakers to now not only traditional automakers and mobility players, but to, you know, other companies in the space adjacent to mobility that are now also being impacted?
Philipp Kampshoff: I think it’s a great question. While I would say our work mostly five years back, ten years back, was with traditional automotive players, think about the OEMs and suppliers, that has truly changed in the last few years and we see basically the lines of industries blurring very much. We see construction companies getting into charging space. We’re seeing insurance companies buy up auto repair stores. We are seeing OEMs offering insurance products now. So it’s very interesting when you look at the mobility space, the traditional lines of industries and how we allocated one company into one industry, are truly blurring in the more recent years and we see them cut across much more.
It’s very interesting when you look at the mobility space, the traditional lines of industries and how we allocated one company into one industry, are truly blurring in the more recent years and we see them cut across much more.
Allie Medack: Philipp, you’ve been so generous with your time. Thank you for joining us for this inaugural episode. Before we close, give us some advice. Any questions that you want us to ask our upcoming guests?
Philipp Kampshoff: I would say so, first of all, thanks for doing this. I think it’s a brilliant idea and I’m really, really excited to listen to future episodes, when you bring in people from the industry, and just to see sort of their viewpoint as well. So thanks for doing this. I would say, look, there’s a lot of myth still around that a lot of these future mobility topics. When we talk about electric cars, you know, people always ask, are we going to have the batteries available to produce all of these cars? Can the grids actually handle it? You know, are you losing a tremendous amount of range in winter. Or will the batteries degrade so much over time that after a few years, basically your electric vehicle won’t go any more? There’s just so many questions and I would love you guys also to, you know, maybe in each one of these episodes, take a little bit of a time and address some of these myths and just, bring the right fact base when it comes to the future of mobility.
Allie Medack: Love that, the Mythbusters, a little slogan maybe.
Matías Garibaldi: Thank you so much, Phillipp. Really a pleasure having you. Really appreciate it.
Philipp Kampshoff: Thanks, anytime. Thanks for having me.
