Making It Viable
Building a sustainable mobility system isn’t just a question of physics or engineering, it’s a question of incentives, resources, and coordination. Capitalism and free markets and funding all impose more hard constraints that we have to solve.
Markets Are Mercyless
Markets only produce efficient outcomes under very strong conditions : when competition is fair, information is perfect, and incentives align. Even then, efficiency (Pareto optimality) doesn’t guarantee fairness or justice.
Unchecked competition can trigger what Scott Alexander calls Moloch traps: situations where rational individual decisions collectively destroy shared value. Examples abound: the Prisoner’s Dilemma, overfishing, race-to-the-bottom labor practices, arms races, or the two-income trap for suburban housing.
From a “god’s-eye-view,” the system could stop destroying value: everyone could cooperate and reap mutual benefits. But from within the system, the individual has no incentive to unilaterally act against the competitive currents as it would penalize the individual greatly.
In mobility, this shows up as legacy car companies prioritizing top-line growth over sustainability, urban planners favoring cars over bikes because of political risk, and investors demanding quick returns instead of long-term environmental gains.
Early-Stage Funding
We rely on donnation and will expand that to sponsorship in the future. Once our scientific work is good enough we will focus on the next problem : Financing it and delivering it a scale.