 What kind of world do I want to live in? I think about this question a lot. For our generation and for specifically my group of people, which is refugees, the circumstances might dismantle any vision of the future that we have. You're trying to rebuild, you're trying to make a future for yourself, and then the climate-related disaster can only start again. It's not about how it's affecting you now, it's about how it's affecting you your entire life. The first step to understand is that we're all a part of it. None of us are going to be left out by the crisis. We're at a stage where if we don't act now, there won't be very much left. There are generations that will never see certain things that we grew up seeing in real life. We have to start treating this like the emergency it is to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals. We have to go from an intention to a serious commitment. Business leaders really need to rethink how they conduct their business and invest in creating systems that are climate friendly. The action I would like to see is accountability. Structures being put in place where countries aren't just asked to do something, but they're kept accountable to the decisions that they make. There has to be that strong collaboration between government, between corporations, between youth activists to drive change forward. The world I would want to live in is a world where imagining the future is not a privilege. I want to live in a world where people do not give up on hope. Hope that a positive change is possible. The fact that you're listening today means that you are willing to make a change. A very warm welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this important conversation, Globalizing the Sustainable Mobility Transition. As a short introduction, I'm Jessica Chiang, Managing Director of EcoBusiness, and I'm delighted to be your moderator today. I'm happy to share that this opening segment that is commencing now, which will set the context of our discussion, will be on the record and made publicly available after the session. I'd also like to thank the World Economic Forum for the invitation to moderate this panel, which is a topic very close to my heart. In my other head, I sit on the Board of Directors of Comfort Dergo Group, which is listed on the Singapore Exchange and is one of the world's largest transport companies with major operations in Singapore, Australia, China, and the UK. I chair the Board Sustainability Committee, which has been grappling with this very issue of how to globalize and accelerate a sustainable mobility transition. There is no doubt that the mobility sector is undergoing a revolution. There is fresh urgency to decarbonize the sector in an equitable, sustainable way, and this is forcing a reimagination of how to move people and goods across the globe. This conversation is an important and timely one, as climate ambition and action gathers momentum around the globe in the lead-up to the COP26 climate talks due to be held in November. By 2040, more than half of the new car sold globally will be electric vehicles, shared in autonomous solutions, but also drastically disrupt the mobility landscape. These trends will have deep implications and requires thoughtful planning so that countries are to reap the benefits of cleaner air, energy security, and more affordable transport options. If we are to achieve an equitable and sustainable global mobility system, it will require deep public and private sector partnership. And to this end, the World Economic Forum's Global New Mobility Coalition is a multi-stakeholder initiative seeking to activate the sustainable mobility in cities by fostering public-private collaboration. The minimal mobility vision is to catalyze supply and demand for carbon-neutral mobility ecosystem by 2050. So today, we will speak with some of the leading voices from the public, private, and civil society around the world who will share their insights on how we can shape this future together. I'd now like to introduce our distinguished panelists. We have with us Miriam Al-Faudri, Group Chief Marketing Officer Agility Singapore, Glinda Bhathan-Batterina, Deputy Executive Director, Clean Air Asia, Philippines, Iris Chang, Director, Sustainability and Social Impact, Grab, Singapore, Gunjan Krishna, Commissioner for Industrial Development and Director, Industries and Commerce, Government of Karnataka, India, as well as Theodor Svajamak, Member of the Group Executive Committee, Chief Communications and Sustainability Officer, ABB Switzerland. We have a lot of ground to cover, so I'm going to dive right in. And Theodor, we'll start with you. How do you define sustainable mobility, and how is ABB supporting a sustainable transition for industry and society? First, thank you very much, Jessica, and also thank you to the World Economic Forum for inviting ABB to participate in myself in this very important discussion today. Sustainable mobility is really at the heart of what we do at ABB Global Technology Company. For us, it's all about provisioning lower CO emission transport in an efficient and intelligent manner for people and goods to make them accessible, equitable and affordable, which is also a very important thing. Given that transport accounts also for up to a third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions today, sustainable mobility will really be crucial for achieving all the targets set in the Paris Agreement. At ABB, we provide our customers with various different mobility solutions which are sustainable. Actually, the company was founded on the electrification of rainways in Switzerland and Sweden, our two home countries over 130 years ago, and we're still very much actively involved in electrifying rain transport, but also road transport from cars, opportunity charging of buses and trucks, but also at sea, so electric propulsion systems for various types of ships. Today we're also the leading global provider of electric fast charging technology for e-vehicles, and we are very proud to have installed more than 460,000 electric vehicle chargers in more than 88 markets around the world so far, and this is a business as you can understand, which is at the moment growing very much. At ABB, providing infrastructure and solutions for sustainable mobility is really part of our commitment to driving a more sustainable world, and it's at the center of our company's purpose, and the value that we provide on a daily basis to our customers and society. When we do this, we always seek to balance the needs of both society, the environment, and of course the economy overall. Last year, we launched our 2030 sustainability strategy in which we committed to improving sustainability across ABB's entire value chain, and I want to highlight one of the main commitments that we made, which is to help our customers reduce their annual emissions by at least 100 megatons on an annual basis in 2030. This is the equivalent of the annual emissions of more than 30 million combustion cars. We will also lead by example in our own operations by becoming carbon neutral by 2030 or earlier, and to achieve this goal, we have committed to transitioning our entire fleet of more than 10,000 vehicles to non-emitting, preferably electric, but as well as sourcing all our energy from renewables and drive energy management across our global sites. And we are very advanced already in these states, and we are very proud, as I said before, to be a key leader in driving the electrical vehicle charging infrastructure, and we are very well-advanced at this already in some places of the world, like for example, Northwest Europe. Thank you so much, Theodore. I'm sure we have many questions for you. I want to turn to Maryam now. Agility has had a long history as a logistics provider and has recently made some major investments in new mobility companies. What innovations and new solutions do you think will be key to the transition to a carbonized, efficient, and inclusive passages and goods mobility sector? Thank you very much, Jessica. So Agility used to be a global logistics company operating in 100 countries, and we sold that part of the business, but we have that history of being a road freight operator, particularly in emerging markets. And now we're moving very much into being an investor in the supply chain space, and we've been early investors in some very interesting companies in the sustainable mobility space. And I will say one of the things that has become really clear to us at Agility as we think about our future is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I mean, it sounds like a very obvious thing to say, but it's very clear that different countries and different regions of the world link to their economic trajectory and a number of other localized factors are really in different spaces when it comes to the ability to adopt new technologies. And I think that's really important because when we think about emerging markets in particular, when I think about markets across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, one of the huge issues that will need to be resolved is what you do with existing infrastructure. So although the technology exists to really leapfrog, several steps forward, you still have the problem of an economy that is heavily based around fossil fuels and this existing infrastructure that needs to be dealt with. And I think one of the areas that we're really interested in investing in is these pragmatic solutions that address the issue of existing infrastructure. And I'll give you two examples that I think are interesting. We were investors in a company called Hylion that essentially turns an existing fleet into a hybrid with a very simple retrofit. And one of the things that really attracted us to that technology, in addition to the fact that it's groundbreaking, is that it gives you a very quick solution to a fleet that you already have, which you can imagine certainly in emerging markets where even upgrading a model is an issue, making leapfrogging ahead to completely different technology very quickly is often just not practical. And another example of a company that we invested in is a company called Swivel. And this is a shared mobility platform and it's sort of quasi private mass transportation. So essentially the story of this company is that in Egypt, after many years of a depressed economy, there were a number of tourist vans that were not being utilized because tourists weren't coming to Egypt for various reasons, economic and political and so on. So this company started putting these vans back in the road basically on bus routes and using these existing fleets in new ways. And I think both of these companies, what they have in common is the idea that there's a practical, you know, interim step for emerging markets. And I think that's a really important thing to think about in these discussions. Thank you so much, Maryam. And the emerging markets really are where we see all the innovations in mobility, I think. So I think there's some really interesting areas that we can explore there later as well. I'd now like to turn to Iris. Grapp provides a number of services to its platform. I am a user too, including ride hailing. What are the barriers to electrification that are facing ride hailing operations now? And how can we possibly co-design regulation that balances the needs of the environment and livelihoods and the business of drivers and riders? That's a great question. Thanks so much, Jessica. So I guess for Grapp, we operate across eight countries in Southeast Asia. And Singapore is the only developed country in that space. Everywhere else, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar are actually a very big challenge in terms of electrification. And for quite a few reasons, right? So I think firstly, these countries itself are still largely brown grid, right? And they don't even have intentions like in the States or in Europe where trillions of dollars are being earmarked for greener grids. So I think therein lies, even if we were to electrify all the cars, it's still not a very, I guess, long-term solution of reducing that carbon that will be emitted from transportation. I think secondly, if you look at infrastructure, while Singapore has a very clear plan to get there, but for the other countries, it's a large, it's a very chicken and egg situation, right? Like you don't have enough cars. Why would there be charging stations? What about maintenance? So there's a lot of infrastructure that is lacking and we've actually ran pilots, EV pilots with our drivers for motorbikes as well as our cars in countries like Indonesia and Singapore and even in Singapore, okay? The drivers are coming back and saying that the barriers are just that, you know, it takes so long to charge their vehicles. It takes like one to two hours every day while they are driving just to recharge and this time that they take would obviously mean trading off earning opportunities, right? So that lack of, I guess, fast charging, that lack of innovation in battery capacity. So all of these sort of like draw into the whole lack of infrastructure and technology on top of cost of ownership, which, you know, today it's still high compared to petrol cars. And lastly, one of the facts is that the cars that are designed for electrification today is not designed for ride hailing. Meaning you say like if you look at price points that aim at the middle upper class, you look at sizing for boots, you know, sizing for passengers. It's still not ideal for the type of drivers that actually are serving on our platform. So all of these are challenges that we face today in electrification. And I guess when we think about the government, there's a couple of things that we are hoping to drive and move forward in our partnerships with them, right? So one of it would be, I guess for us, we actually have a very big reach. We have like 24 for almost 25 million monthly active users on our platform. And actually we would really like to be able to partner with them to play a part in public education. And not just that, but, you know, recently we also launched a couple of features, like for example, our carbon offset feature where it's in the app that a customer can just easily toggle to contribute for offsets. We are trying to use technology to reinforce education and make it easy for them to take action because just so many of them are, you know, even though they are aware, they find that it's very, very hard to actually take action in this space. The second being how do we work with governments to actually think about financing, right? Financing schemes, especially for this group of drive partners that we have on our platform where they are actually economically, you know, challenged in that respect, right? So really hard enough to put food on the table, maintain the current car. Now we are saying, hey, you know, how do you change to an electric car or a hybrid? That's a very, very big ask to be made even in the name of environmental, right? And lastly, I guess as a tech company, naturally we have a lot of data that we can, you know, aid governments with urban planning, green infrastructure developments. So I guess, you know, in that respect, we can definitely add value to governments and we are trying to partner with them that way. Thank you so much, Iris, for that overview. I think it's super interesting that you mentioned how infrastructure really needs to be keeping up with this electrification revolution and there's still a lot of pain points there. And then the public education, you know, carbon offsets piece is also super important if we are going to get mass adoption by transport consumers to these more sustainable modes. So thank you for those perspectives. We've heard from the business sector now regarding the mechanisms supporting decarbonisation. And I'd now like to turn to Gunjan Commissioner. Kanataka is a leading region in the EV sector thanks to how it forces innovation and attracts investment. Can you shed some light for us on your experience in fostering sustainable businesses in this sector and how has regulation enabled a strong ecosystem? Thanks, Jessica, and thanks a lot for giving me this opportunity today to be part of the World Economic Forum, Globalising Sustainable Mobility Transition. Talking about Kanataka, Kanataka is one of the lighthouse states of the country when it comes to electric mobility. We totally stand for sustainability. In fact, if you look at the total renewable energy that is produced within the state, 63% of our energy comes from the renewable sources. So that shows our commitment to sustainability. Now, talking about sustainable mobility in particular, we are actually looking at the ecosystem approach. Now, ecosystem approach has got various components. Now, if we look at the components, we are talking about the policy. There is a strong policy pool that we are creating for all the players to come and participate in the electric mobility sector within the state. We were the first state to come out with the exclusive EV policy in 2017. We have updated, keeping up with the times, we have updated our policy also. The whole focus there is essentially the supply side incentives. So we are looking at manufacturers. We are promoting manufacturers to set up their electric vehicle manufacturing within the state. For that, we are giving turnover subsidies, some capital subsidies. We are asking them to create charging infrastructure. So we are giving subsidies on the creation of the charging infrastructure. So that is one part of it that we are looking at from the policy. From the regulatory side, what we are looking at is how we can ensure and mandate all our buildings, all our commercial complexes, metro stations, to mandate them to have necessarily electric vehicle charging stations. So that is what we are creating, the entire ecosystem for these charging stations to be created in the cities along the national highway. So we are coming out already, we have in place within the Bangalore city around 125 charging stations. We plan to scale them to 600 charging stations. We are working very closely with the private players for setting up these high-speed charging stations along the national highways. So that comes in the regulatory part and also from the demand side, if I were to look at it, we have ensured that all the electric vehicles registration, there are no charges to be paid. Similarly, road tax they do not have to pay. So that is kind of incentives given to the buyers of the electric vehicles. We are also talking about cluster approach. So 50 kilometers away from Bangalore city, if you as you all know, Bangalore is a tech hub and the tech innovation city of the world. We are setting up a cluster where you will have a testing centers, the testing track, the EV vehicles so that and also we are going to create an innovation center. So where in the academia, the industries, the startups, we have a very rich ecosystem of 45 plus startups which are working in this area. We are also working very closely with these startups to understand how we can de-link the battery from the vehicle because the major cost, 50% of the cost 40 to 50% cost is from the battery. So here we are trying to work out innovative business models wherein, you know, swapping centers and so that can be monetized in that ways and there would be only cost would be because the high cost of the electric vehicle is one of the problems which the people face for broad basing the electric vehicle. So that again, that we are working in a big way. The important aspect is retrofitting because we understand in Karnataka or in India we have to look at that more and more people by electric vehicles. And the one of the quick gains we can have in this sector is by ensuring that two wheelers and three wheelers particularly which are used in the fleet can be retrofitted and we are planning to keep a target of say 100,000 vehicles in a year that can be converted retrofitted so that we can have these two or three wheelers on the roads and that would help to spur the demand of the electric vehicles within and create the ecosystem. So our idea essentially is to have both supply side, demand side, create the ecosystem, the infrastructure that is required, have the innovative inputs that are required with the help of all these stakeholders and give that push that is required for this to become sustainable. Thank you so much, Commissioner. I think you've just proven that government intervention and cooperation is so important for us to really transition into a more sustainable mobility ecosystem. Last but not least, I'd like to turn to Glinda. In terms of mobility regulation and financing this transition, what do you think needs to happen to change the system into a more sustainable mobility in the region Southeast Asia? What is your organization doing to assist governments in the region? Thank you very much, Jessica. I'd like to give a little bit of context on the situation in developing Asian countries. Road transport in this region is characterized by high public mass transport ridership. Still a majority of trips are by public transport and mass transit buses, paratransit modes and three wheelers that provide a valuable mobility service to society are often forgotten in the mobility transition. If we are to include them in this transition, we need to focus on the unique challenges they face. And I take the example of the challenge of paratransit modes such as the Jeepneys, the famous Jeepneys in the Philippines. Their challenge is really the high capital investment needed for replacing their vehicles with cleaner ones. Most of these Jeepneys are in need of upgrading as they run on secondhand engines some more than 10 years old, usually unmaintained diesel run and highly polluting vehicles with high vehicle kilometers traveled. And this transport mode should really be prioritized in government programs to shift to electric mobility. Currently purchased subsidies offered by government are insufficient to allow them to invest in new electric vehicles. So how could we help them then? They'll need to be organized and professionalized into transport cooperatives that purchase and manage fleets of vehicles. And for this to succeed, they'll need training and organizational development and management skills. They'll need to understand the technology, the financial implications for shifting to EVs, for example, that batteries will need to be replaced in the future. And another public transport mode in developing Asian countries are the three-wheelers or the tuk-tuk, the rickshaws, or tricycles as we call them in the Philippines. They provide valuable last mile service to a majority of people. And what they need is access to microfinancing and clear regulations on where they're allowed to travel. Business models that reduce the upfront cost of investment are also needed to help them participate in the mobility transition. Now, Cleaner Asia, a 20-year-old international NGO based in Asia, we facilitate the participatory electric vehicle roadmap development led by government agencies, but involving private sector, the academia, civil society groups and the operators and drivers of the paratransit modes and the three-wheelers. We aim to ensure that the concerns of these sectors are considered in the electric vehicle roadmaps of countries. Thank you so much, Linda, for that perspective and so relevant to remind us that a lot of the mass transport are still the two-wheelers and we must include them in this transition. On that note, I want to thank all our speakers and viewers for joining us here for this first part of the discussion. Please do contact the Global New Mobility Coalition team at the Forum to support the Forum's efforts to sync shared electric connected and autonomous mobility technologies. We will be concluding this segment now, so thank you very much.