From Hydrogen to the World Cup: John Rossant on the Future of Mobility

I'm Paul Comfort. Excited to have you with us on this special episode of Transit Unplugged, the world's leading transit executive podcast. Today I have my good friend, John Raan, who is founder and CEO of CoMotion. It's a global platform where the most innovative transportation and technology companies, as well as civic and business leaders from across the mobility ecosphere, explore, collaborate, and interact. To share ideas and make deals a little bit different than some John. Huh?

You're making deals at your conference, aren't you? You're a deal maker, man. Sure. That's the name of the game, man. There you go.

So, uh, CoMotion, I've been to a bunch of them. CoMotion organizes world leading future mobility gatherings, called CoMotion Miami and CoMotion la two of the hot transit tech cities in America and really in the world. They produced a Fast Forward podcast where I've been a guest in the past. And publish a weekly Substack CoMotion news, which I love by the way. It's a great place to get news and information with incisive news and analysis from the mobility, uh, revolution.

John is also, and I'm particularly interested in this, the president of the Monaco Hydrogen Alliance. this is the first platform exclusively dedicated to mobility and renewable hydrogen. John also sits on the advisory board for the alliance. For Southern California Innovation and Neon.

And, uh, John, I remember you and I have been friends for, I don't know, five or 10 years, and I remember being at the first la uh, one of the first CoMotion LA conferences, and I was just blown away by the technology you've got there. And, and the, it has a very different field than other traditional transit conferences, which I love. It feels edgier and it feels, uh, more on, more, almost on the bleeding edge, not just cutting edge. So bravo to you and your team.

It is high praise coming from you. Thank you, Paul. Yeah, absolutely.

And John, of course, uh, those of you who got the, uh, comfort Food Cookbook will remember John from his recipe that he put in there. Hey, let's start with that. John. tell us about the recipe and comfort food and, and where that came from. Well in, in, uh, the earlier part of my life, I lived in Rome, Italy, where I met my wife and got married and started a family. And we had a good friend, uh, back in Rome who's unfortunately no longer with us, who was actually a, uh, poet.

And she was also not only a published and well-known poet, but she was a great cook. She loved to eat, she loved to make. Great food and, and she introduced me to the joys of good Italian wine. And she had a recipe that, was so simple but was so good. And it is involves if you can get your hands on very good, fresh yellow peppers and a little bit of saffron. And some olive oil and pecorino cheese. That's all you need to make a really great pasta.

Um, and it involves just kind of patiently cooking the yellow peppers down to kind of liquid form and adding some saffron. Anyway, that's, yeah. Great. This, that's great. And I remember it was probably two years ago now, we, we actually, uh, did the book launch. At CoMotion Miami. You and I did. Yeah. Uh, the first time the book was released, we did a book signing. It was great. The book is going on to, great acclaim around the world, and, uh, thank you for your part in that.

Uh, and it just shows, um, the innovation that you're known for. You, you live part-time in tour in Italy, and that's what we're talking from today, right? That is absolutely. I'm kind of between LA and Turin, which is, uh, the La Turin access. Don't, don't ask, but, uh,

well, I, I'm excited to, uh, to be with you in Miami, which is coming up, uh, very soon, which is the CoMotion Miami Conference. And it is, uh, April 29th through 30th. It's, uh, the theme is New reality, new Opportunities. It'll be a Miami Dades College AI center. Uh, we'll be there filming an episode of Transit Unplugged tv. So for those of you who wanna see it in person, we invite you to join us there.

And then afterwards, uh, we'll have an episode of Transit Unplugged tv, which showcases some of the stuff there. John, tell us about it this year's theme and what's going on there.

I. Yeah, I mean, we're calling it um, uh, new realities, new opportunities. I mean, there is a new reality of course, which is, um, a new administration in Washington, which is changing some of the rules of the game. and I think, you know, there are. Not going anywhere. They're not going anywhere. So we have to get used to it and adapt over the next three years, three, three and a half years.

in some cases it's a, could be a negative for cities because one of the expectations is that the funding spigot from the federal government to municipalities will decline, this year in the coming years. So cities have to be more creative. About finding ways to finance sustainable, mobility, sustainable transportation projects going forward. And it's in a difficult moment because, uh, uh. you know, tax receipts are going down, et cetera.

It's, it's not an enormously strong economy, so, you know, we have to be creative. One of the interesting things that we're gonna be doing in Miami is we're launching a, a new international task force, called the Sumit Task Force, the Sustainable Urban Mobility Investment Task Force, and it looks at. Precisely some of the new, uh, financial instruments that cities can use to finance, you know, new metro lines, uh, new, uh, electric bus fleets, et cetera.

Given that, uh, in the United States, the federal larges is probably gonna go down. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing too. Actually, I'll be in Washington, DC this week, the week we're recording the first week of April, um, going onto the hill, I'll be meeting with House and Senate leaders, meeting with the Federal Trans Administration, meeting with apta. And we're gonna get a kind of, get a pulse on what's happening. Yeah. Uh, and report back to our listeners. So I think it's great.

I actually just spoke at a conference in Texas a couple weeks ago, and that was my theme, John. It was a new year, you know, a new administration and a new you. So it seems to be the theme, huh? Yeah. But we also, you know, we, again, we wanna look on the positive side and that's, that's what we see. New realities, but new opportunities. There's still a lot of opportunities out there. There is a lot of, technological innovation that is still going forward.

And you know, I thank you for pointing out that Commotion is a place where these kinds of technological innovations are discussed, and I think one of the.

Real differentiating things about what we do at Commotion is that we talk about innovation and cutting edge and bleeding edge technology, but we also, the public sector is very much a part of that. We see that, you know, we deep, we believe that mobility, uh, takes place in the public right of way. Uh, mobility will always be a extremely regulated industry.

and so it's, that's why it's so important to bring public and private together, and that's kind of at the heart of what we try to do at Commotion. So it's, it's skews pretty evenly between 50% public sector, 50% private sector. So do you guys do like a, um. Uh, shark Tank kind of thing. Still there where people present their latest technology or, and you have another conference too? Yeah. Yeah. But we, we also. Kind of reverse it.

Okay. So instead of having, cool startups pitch their cool technology to clients or to the public sector, we have the public sector, heads of departments of transportation, and, uh, people like that pitching to the private sector in the sense, this is what we need. This is Oh, wow. And, and people find this extremely useful. Yeah. So we begin each day with, with this breakfast, which is pitching the private sector, essentially. Okay. That's interesting. Instead of the other way around.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great, man. and you've got some amazing speakers coming up. I've looked, by the way, thank you. I'm, I'm gonna be moderating a, a panel, which I think will be pretty cool. I'll talk about that in a minute. Yeah, we, we always love having you on stage, Paul. Thank you. You really bring a lot of insights and you're, you're just a great presence on stage. So thanks. I feel like I'm a professional moderator now. That's what I do a lot of times is moderate these panels.

But, um, tell us about some of the other great speakers you've got coming up. Well, we've of course got the two key mayors, from Miami, uh, mayor Daniella, Levine Kava, who's the mayor of Miami Dade County, which is the big. Conglomeration of, of, of cities where Miami is. And also our, our old friend Francis Suarez, who's the mayor of Miami itself, the city of Miami. , we also have other mayors.

for example, the Mayor of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, is coming into Commotion Miami, which is quite a long trip. and she in fact, is going to be part of this new task force we're setting up on, finding innovative financing mechanisms for cities because it's not only an American conversation, but it's also very much a global conversation. one of the interesting things about this new task force is that, also global cities. Have to find new and innovative ways to finance big projects.

So the World Bank, for example, estimates that over the next 30 years or so, will need around $50 trillion. That's a key trillion. Yeah. For new investments in sustainable transportation technology around the world. And currently there's about a $10 trillion gap. Between, you know, what central governments can finance, et cetera. So cities really have to be, very creative in how they finance these new things and find that, you know, $10 trillion.

So. Often, if you think about the world financial system that was, uh, pretty much organized after the second World War, it basically has nation states rather than cities at the center of it. And so often in the outside the United States, cities don't have access to financial markets for a variety of reasons. The same way that American cities do have. Quite a lot of access via municipal funding, municipal bonds.

So it's, it's a, it's kind of a complicated, but very, very important subject because if we don't find these financial resources, we're not gonna be able to put in the new kinds of, sustainable, uh, transportation systems that, that we need in our cities. Just for people who may be interested or may be attending on Tuesday, I'll be on the leadership stage at 4:30 PM moderating what you and I just talked about, John.

It's a panel on autonomous mobility at scale, safety policy, and real world deployment. Nat Ford will be there, of course, from the JTA, leadership from Miami-Dade and some other folks there too from ZOOX and NTSB. It ought to be an amazing panel. Thanks for setting me up with that man. Well, that's good. No, no, thank you. Because it's, you know, it could not be a more important topic. I mean, autonomous, vehicles are here and they're here to stay. It's only gonna grow.

as you well know, Florida, has been a leader in thinking about. How autonomous vehicles will, will and can navigate our cities in the future, uh, in terms of, you know, really smart legislation, smart regulations around that. So, I think the whole, transit community can learn a lot from how Florida is doing it. Yeah, Nat Ford at JTA has had that test and learn facility, and now he's announced that, hold on.

Uh, the manufacturer from Europe is gonna bring, our first America based, uh, manufacturing plant so they can meet, uh, by America requirements, et cetera, I guess. So that's coming supposedly soon. He was just on Capitol Hill last week. I saw him do a post on that. Oh, great. Yeah, a lot of good stuff happening. When we come back in just a minute, John, I'm gonna ask you about, how you put together these private and public sector leaders a little bit more and dive into that.

And plus I wanna dive into hydrogen and what you're doing in Monaco and all that. Right after this special announcement, I. And we're back with John Raat, who is founder and CEO of CoMotion. We're talking about the upcoming CoMotion Miami conference. Uh, John, you know, I, I was just in Kansas City for our company conference, uh, think Transit, and, um, I. Frank White, the CEO was talking about, uh, the World Cup coming to the us uh, and how a lot of cities are getting ready for the Texas too.

A lot of cities are happening here, I think in Canada, Mexico, and the us. Are you addressing that at all at the conference?

Absolutely it's gonna be front and center because Miami, of course, is one of the big, uh, world Cup cities next year and it's really coming up fast. Yeah. You know, so, uh, we've got Tanya Mahan from the FIFA World Cup Organization, so that'll be great. we have, people from Los Angeles who were looking at the World Cup, you know how cities.

Approach and deal with mega events like this from a transit point of view could not be more important because transit is really at the heart of whether you're gonna have a successful event or not, because it involves moving vast numbers of fans, uh, you know, across from, from, uh, yeah, venue to venue two, et cetera. And doing that in a kind of seamless way will really contribute to the success of the event. So one of the things you know at all, whether it's Commotion LA. Or Commotion Miami.

But over the last couple of years, there has been a big focus on mega events. Yeah. And of course in LA where we have our Commotion LA conference, we also have not only the World Cup next year, but in 2028, the Olympics. Right. Which, you know, is a other kind of challenge. I mean, it's just, you know, just a, a really big deal. Yeah. We did a recent episode of our Transit Unplugged TV show there and, uh, featuring, you know, how they're getting ready for the Olympics.

We had con in on there to CO and a bunch of other folks that the CIO and um, actually it, it was our biggest watch show ever in California. We had thousands of viewers in California. Of course, they're all interested in how they're gonna do a transit First Olympics there and try to move cars out of the equation. Yeah. But you know, I, I think if you look at, you know, some of the other speakers, uh, yeah.

In Miami, like Michael Lynn Abnet from HNTB, uh, or Dimitri Ovv, uh, the head of Uber Transit, everyone's gonna be talking about mega events and about, the World Cup, you know? That's, that's right. Really coming up fast. And I saw Collie Greenwood's gonna be there too, from Marta. That's cool.

Yeah. Another great speaker that I really need to mention is, of course, Stacy Miller, who, mayor Levine Kava, has appointed, to be the new head of the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works. you know, she, she, I. Started, April 7th. So this will really be the first opportunity that, that she has to give a vision of, of, of, of what she has in mind over the next few years, uh, in Miami-Dade. So, very excited about that.

one of the things I love about your conference too, John, is it's just not like on buses and trains, like a lot of traditional transit, but you've got aviation, you've got vertical takeoff and landing vehicles there, you've got all kinds of stuff. who do you have coming, speaking kind of on that? Anybody cool this year? Yeah, I mean we have, um, Joby will be there, you know, it's one of the, the leaders in the space.

I'm not sure if anybody's is coming from Archer, uh, but Eve, which is another EAL group, based, in Florida. so we've got somebody from the Paris airport, right. Arab de, which is, uh, owns the, not only the Paris airports, but owns a bunch of other airports in France and in Europe. Oh, wow.

So they're, they're a big actor in the kind of aviation space, in Europe and thinking very proactively about how, electric, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft can be, integrated into, airport, uh, right systems in the future. When people go to the commotion, uh, it's not just walking outside a lot of times Is it gonna be outside, by the way, your expo this year where people get to see It's, it's, it's sort of in and out. Okay. I mean, the sessions will be inside right.

Air conditioned and we are in my. Um, but there is, you know, you can, there are a lot of things outside and, you know, we're not a trade show, but we encourage people to kind of bring gadgets to look at or, or vehicles. 'cause I, you know, it's, it's always nice sort of. Yeah. You know, kicking in the tires. I love that. That's what I love about it for sure. We're gonna showcase some of that on our show too, but tell us more about, uh, I love your evening receptions.

You know, you have some great work sessions, a challenge. Talk to us about what else people will experience when they're at CoMotion Miami this year I. Well, you mentioned, uh, the challenge and this year, um, we're partnering with the Miami Innovation Authority, which is a fairly new, entity, of Miami-Dade County. they support, a whole variety of early stage growth companies to come up with sort of.

various kinds of technological innovations to make Miami-Dade, better adapted to citizens' needs. And a lot of what they look at is mobility. So they're doing a challenge this year, which we're helping out with. And so we'll be hearing from some of the companies involved in that challenge. So I'm really excited about that.

As you say, there's always a lot of side events and I think a big part of, you know, the value of Commotion is meeting people and, you know, building your net, your own network. And, uh, you know, often it's in sort of informal discussions in the corridor or or over a beer at night where you really learn things and you've come away with deep insights about the direction. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love, uh, I love all those things.

Last time I was in Miami with you two years ago, I remember the opening reception, man, you had a DeLorean right there. And, uh, of course that's, you know, the coolest car ever, you know, for those of us of a certain age. Remember back to the future. So love all the kind of neat things you've got going on there. what is the mission for CoMotion? What's your, what's your game plan?

I mean, ultimately, look, I mean, our mission is, you know, we believe in a future of, you know, sustainable, seamless, multimodal mobility in cities. We think that. The seamlessness is a really key, element in the future. You know, the future is multimodal and one of the really interesting things that we look at is all the amazing new modes of mobility that are coming down the pike.

And you mentioned, you know, advanced air mobility options and, and you're right, we were very, very early on, I think in the very first, commotion LA eight years ago. We in fact had a discussion of advanced air mobility and no one had really thought about it, was thinking about it back then, but it, it is going to be part of an urban region's, um, mobility options in the future.

Yep. And instead of, you know, getting in a, in a Uber, uh, to go to LAX, if you live in Hollywood Hills, for example, right. You're gonna hop on in an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and do that trip in five minutes. That would may maybe otherwise take an hour. Yeah, I can't wait for that. Yeah, I, I want an autonomous vitol to come and land in my front yard. Pick me up for $99 and take me to the roof of the ft. A building in downtown dc. Beat all that traffic.

It's about an hour drive. I bet you we could do it in 15 minutes. So yeah, the Eastern, I mean, it's a future that is starting to come into focus. Same way you have. you know, I think we were among the first to start talking about maritime mobility and we see that also, you know, a lot of cities are on the water. That's right. and you know how you get from point A to point B. Officially could involve a trip on the water. Yes. That doesn't have to be Venice.

It could also be New York City, for example. That's right. Or Washington dc I was just there this last week with Randy Clark. We were doing an episode featuring how to get around Washington DC using transit instead of cars. Yep. And, uh, we rode the water taxi, right, right behind, uh, you know, Georgetown across, uh, across the water from there. So Georgetown Park, it was great.

One of the other great things you're working on, John, that you and I are in alignment on is the power of hydrogen, as a, as a new sustainable, you know, zero emission fuel. Of course, here in America, we have seven hydrogen hubs that were outlined in the, IAJA, uh, that were funded and they're starting to come into focus, but it's still very slow. Feels like we're dragging our feet on hydrogen a little bit. What's going on with hydrogen around the world and what, what are you doing with it?

Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that because, um, it's something that we've always looked at somewhat at commotion. certainly hydrogen for, uh, trucking, heavy duty trucking is yeah, is a really important use case because you just can't get batteries. You know, they're gonna be so big and so heavy to propel, a truck long distances that there won't be any room for cargo. And so the great thing about hydrogen is that it has four to five times the energy of lithium iron batteries.

And so you can really Go the distance, which is why, for example, Joby, who I mentioned, which is one of the players in the electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft is very advanced in hydrogen because they recognize that a battery powered, Little aircraft that needs a lot of power to, to rise vertically. if you use batteries, you're not gonna have a lot of range.

And so they retrofitted one of their evals for, fuel hydrogen fuel cell and had a test flight last summer of close to 600 miles. Wow. That completely opens up a new kind of regional mode of, demand driven, sustainable transportation, you know, getting from your house to perhaps not to, the center of Washington, but maybe to a suburb. New York City. Yeah. New York City. Yeah. Yeah. It's only a four hour drive, so yeah. Wow. That's amazing. And so tell me about the Monaco Hydrogen Alliance.

What is that and what do you do? Yeah, we set that up around four years ago as a nonprofit. it so happens that we've actually done a lot of work in Monaco over the years, and I'm quite friendly with, uh, prince Albert, the, the ruler of Monaco, who's a very open-minded individual, is. Almost completely focused on fighting climate change and, coming up with sort of zero carbon solutions for, you know, transportation. there are, I think about 300 electric charging stations in Monaco.

They're all free. Anybody can use them and charge up your car for free. we felt that. The world needed a kind of really focused initiative on mobility and renewable hydrogen, green hydrogen, and to look at the sort of the next generation of planes, trains, trucks, boats that will be running on hydrogen. This is not something for tomorrow. There are some pain points about using hydrogen. It's a very, very small atom. Indeed.

It's the smallest, it's the most abundant atom in the universe, by the way, the most abundant element, but it's a tricky one because it's so small. the atoms can leak out. So you have to take. extra care not to have that happen. you know, it's combustible. It's, it's so, it's, it's not so easy. but what's interesting, really, really interesting about the hydrogen space is that the innovations are starting to happen now. If you think about battery electric, it's really been 20 years.

Where the greatest minds in the world have been focused on how to make batteries more efficient. That's just starting now in the hydrogen space. And some of the things we're learning is that we can really bring down the costs of producing, of, of making hydrogen, of storing it, of transporting it, et cetera. So I think, you know, these are things that are coming down the pike. It's very, very exciting. I don't think we're gonna see hydrogen.

We have, there are hydrogen cars, but I think the widespread adoption, a kind of hi, a hydrogen powered Tesla. I think that's not for the next few years. I think trucking is certainly going to happen pretty soon. they're already hydrogen powered trains and the beauty of hydrogen is completely, Friendly to the environment. The only thing that comes out of the tailpipe is water, drops of water.

there's no carbon involved, so it's a very, very exciting space, and again, precisely because of the new kinds of technologies that are, that are, that are, we're starting to see across the whole value chain of hydrogen. And as you know, it's, uh, it's really starting to take the transit industry buses by storm.

My good friend Kurt Conrad, who is CEO of the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority in Canton, Ohio, where the NFL Football Hall of Fame is, he wrote a chapter in my latest book, the New Future Public Transportation, and he heads up the mid, I don't know what it's called, but it's in, it's like the central part of America. They've got a center of excellence and, uh, my friend Mikel Oglesby kind of got it started in Sunlight Transit out there, in, uh, in south of la and.

Dorn Barnes, CEO of, uh, foothills has really, he's got the largest fleet in America of, absolutely hydrogen buses. And so I, I'm excited about this. Very, very forward. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited about it, John, and look forward to continuing to help you promote hydrogen fuel, uh, both here in the United States and around the world because I think it is a great sustainable, and Ed is, in my mind, ed is almost ready for prime time. Based on the people I've talked to and the bus industry.

and so I think it's our time now for hydrogen fuel, so I'm excited about it. And the issue is really kind of infrastructure and, and, yeah, that's right. Don't we have to build out hydrogen infrastructure? So it's, it's always the eternal chicken and egg. I, what comes first until the demand is there, they're not gonna build the infrastructure, but. If there's no infrastructure, the demand won't be there, but it, it, it's gonna happen for sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Well, you can hear more about this and learn more about all the things we've talked about today at John's upcoming CoMotion Miami. It's gonna be held Tuesday and Wednesday, April 29th and 30th in Miami, Florida. I. And, uh, if you're interested in attending, there's still time for you to sign up. It's at CoMotion miami.com. Again, C-O-M-O-T-I-O-N miami.com. You can learn more and you can register there.

We'll be filming, as I mentioned, transit Unplugged TV and episode there, hopefully interviewing a few folks for the podcast. John, as always, thank you for your leadership in our industry and for sharing a few moments, uh, with us today, from tour in Italy on what's coming up and what's going on in your world. It's always a delight to exchange with you, Paul. Really, I just, I love, uh, talking with you about our favorite subject, the future of transit.