Building new buildings takes a really long time. It is not uncommon for development timelines to to span 5-10 years, and sometimes even longer. It is particularly frustrating when you see unnecessary roadblocks and delays throughout the process. But that's a topic for another post.
Perhaps one of the positives of these timelines is that they force you to think well into the future. Take for example electric vehicles. Most car manufacturers have already announced aggressive electrification targets for the year 2030.
What that means is that if you're starting a new project today, you have to assume that it will be completed into a world where many more people will be coming home and plugging in their car. Perhaps it will be the majority of people. So you probably need to plan for that.
Another way to think about development is that it is a leading indicator for what's coming. If we stick with the example of cars and parking, I think it's pretty clear that parking is becoming increasingly scarce in our biggest cities. The pressures are simply too great.
In all of our Toronto projects, we are currently building no more than about 0.4 parking spaces per suite. And there's pressure to bring this number down even further. There are lots of examples of zero parking. The biggest reason is costs, but we also know that big cities don't function well when everyone is driving around.
This is also not a new trend.
If you look at the multi-family buildings that Toronto completed in and around the 60s and 70s, many will have parking ratios in the range of 1-2 parking spaces per suite. This is totally untenable in today's environment (except for a small subset of the market) and I bet you that a lot of this parking is now sitting vacant.
Things change. Development can sometimes tell you what those changes might be.
Photo by Michael Fousert on Unsplash
Food was, not surprisingly, very resilient during this pandemic. In the case of Uber, food delivery became its biggest business (higher gross bookings than mobility). But mobility is coming back (first chart above) as our cities continue to reopen. In fact, Uber’s mobility business is probably a good proxy for our return to normal. Big and sudden drop in March 2020 and a longer climb back. You’ve seen this graphic before. We’re not fully back, yet, but we’re getting there. Based on this metric (mobility), it looks like we could get there by late summer or early fall in many cities.
The above slides were taken from Uber’s Q1-2021 earnings report.
https://youtu.be/ffyHxP6hb3I
Luminar Technologies, which is an autonomous vehicle technology company that I have written about before, just hosted its first ever "Studio Day" in New York City this week. And at the event they announced two new technologies.
The first is called Iris, which is a small lidar device that is intended to be integrated into regular consumer production vehicles -- on the roof just above the windshield. And supposedly the company is on track to have these into full production and available to their OEM partners by the end of next year (2022).
The second technology is something that they are calling Blade, which is a lidar system that can offer a 360 degree field of vision and is intended for use in robo-taxis, trucks, and other consumer vehicles. It's called Blade because it's kind of like a blade that wraps around the tops of these vehicles.
We've been talking about autonomous vehicles for what seems like a long time. And it is now clear that this is not an easy problem to solve. But from what I have read, lidar seems like the promising technology and something that will become necessary for full autonomy. So I am now long $LAZR. Whether this is the right move is still to be determined.
The full Studio Day video is embedded at the top of this post. If you're reading via email subscription and can't see it, click here.
I liked the bit (just after the 9 minute mark) about how headlights were first introduced and how it took some time before they were fully absorbed and integrated into the design of cars. Today they are now a signature design element for most car brands. It's a clever parallel for what Luminar is trying to do with Iris and Blade.
Building new buildings takes a really long time. It is not uncommon for development timelines to to span 5-10 years, and sometimes even longer. It is particularly frustrating when you see unnecessary roadblocks and delays throughout the process. But that's a topic for another post.
Perhaps one of the positives of these timelines is that they force you to think well into the future. Take for example electric vehicles. Most car manufacturers have already announced aggressive electrification targets for the year 2030.
What that means is that if you're starting a new project today, you have to assume that it will be completed into a world where many more people will be coming home and plugging in their car. Perhaps it will be the majority of people. So you probably need to plan for that.
Another way to think about development is that it is a leading indicator for what's coming. If we stick with the example of cars and parking, I think it's pretty clear that parking is becoming increasingly scarce in our biggest cities. The pressures are simply too great.
In all of our Toronto projects, we are currently building no more than about 0.4 parking spaces per suite. And there's pressure to bring this number down even further. There are lots of examples of zero parking. The biggest reason is costs, but we also know that big cities don't function well when everyone is driving around.
This is also not a new trend.
If you look at the multi-family buildings that Toronto completed in and around the 60s and 70s, many will have parking ratios in the range of 1-2 parking spaces per suite. This is totally untenable in today's environment (except for a small subset of the market) and I bet you that a lot of this parking is now sitting vacant.
Things change. Development can sometimes tell you what those changes might be.
Photo by Michael Fousert on Unsplash
Food was, not surprisingly, very resilient during this pandemic. In the case of Uber, food delivery became its biggest business (higher gross bookings than mobility). But mobility is coming back (first chart above) as our cities continue to reopen. In fact, Uber’s mobility business is probably a good proxy for our return to normal. Big and sudden drop in March 2020 and a longer climb back. You’ve seen this graphic before. We’re not fully back, yet, but we’re getting there. Based on this metric (mobility), it looks like we could get there by late summer or early fall in many cities.
The above slides were taken from Uber’s Q1-2021 earnings report.
https://youtu.be/ffyHxP6hb3I
Luminar Technologies, which is an autonomous vehicle technology company that I have written about before, just hosted its first ever "Studio Day" in New York City this week. And at the event they announced two new technologies.
The first is called Iris, which is a small lidar device that is intended to be integrated into regular consumer production vehicles -- on the roof just above the windshield. And supposedly the company is on track to have these into full production and available to their OEM partners by the end of next year (2022).
The second technology is something that they are calling Blade, which is a lidar system that can offer a 360 degree field of vision and is intended for use in robo-taxis, trucks, and other consumer vehicles. It's called Blade because it's kind of like a blade that wraps around the tops of these vehicles.
We've been talking about autonomous vehicles for what seems like a long time. And it is now clear that this is not an easy problem to solve. But from what I have read, lidar seems like the promising technology and something that will become necessary for full autonomy. So I am now long $LAZR. Whether this is the right move is still to be determined.
The full Studio Day video is embedded at the top of this post. If you're reading via email subscription and can't see it, click here.
I liked the bit (just after the 9 minute mark) about how headlights were first introduced and how it took some time before they were fully absorbed and integrated into the design of cars. Today they are now a signature design element for most car brands. It's a clever parallel for what Luminar is trying to do with Iris and Blade.
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