Autonomous vehicles, AI systems and mobility - keywords at the electromobility conference, VECS 2025, in Gothenburg

Oscar Gustafsson is a doctoral student at Environmental and Energy Systems Studies at Lund University.

Oscar Gustafsson is a PhD student within the Mistra Mineral Governance programme, based at the Department of Environmental and Energy Systems Studies at Lund University. His research explores substitutability and criticality of critical raw materials in electric vehicle batteries.

In March, he attended the VECS 2025, an electromobility conference in Gothenburg, with special focus on the session: “Track G – The Future of Mobility and Transportation”. Attending this session were several market actors who presented their perspectives on the topic. He also attended a panel discussion on mobility as a service.

– The three big keywords were autonomous vehicles, AI systems and mobility as a service. There seemed to be a consensus among the attending speakers that rapid development within these areas is in store for the mobility sector. Special emphasis was put on autonomous vehicles with video displays of self-driving buses in Norway and Sweden, as well as multiple exhibitions showcasing simulation and/or other software for autonomous vehicle systems.

He continues:

– The technology has often been accused of always being “two years away” but perhaps this time it is true? The optimism of the speakers sure implies that, but time will tell whether this is the case. Nevertheless, autonomous buses are to be tested on the streets of Gothenburg this fall, so it will be interesting to see how that turns out.

He notes that there seems to be no escape from AI or large language models and the future car industry is no exception, if one asks the speakers and attendants at VECS 2025. Integrating such systems into your car will, supposedly, help with tasks such as planning your route, giving relevant traffic information, and optimizing fuel use. Since the AI hype is somewhat overwhelming in all sectors at the moment, it is quite difficult to gauge what role this technology will play in the future, if any, he says.

– I observed that the rental car companies seemingly aim to move away from providing “rental services” and replace them with the more systemic, and slightly vague, “mobility as a service”. The idea is to, in the near future, to move beyond simply providing a vehicle and instead provide mobility options to their customers. This, I should mention, has the potential to reduce raw material use, but that did not seem to be a vital consideration for the market actors.

He reflects that regrettably, there was little to no discussion of the possible future supply risks and raw material constraints of the electromobility sector.

– Of course, this does not mean that it is a non-issue for the actors attending, nor that they do not care, merely that this was not the venue or context for such a conversation. As such, there was no clear direct connection between this conference and my research on the substitution of critical raw materials in electric vehicle batteries, but it will be interesting to see if this discussion is present at another electromobility conference I plan to attend this summer.