Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 661

Nathaniel Bullard's latest Sparklines article for Bloomberg Green makes some interesting arguments around EV adoption.

First, he shows that cars in general have been getting a lot more expensive. Looking at new vehicle market share in the US according to price (above), you can see how quickly cars over $40k have become about half of the market. Only some of this is inflation.

Nathaniel then goes on to show just how many people lease a luxury vehicle (apparently this is called lease penetration). For Infiniti it's 55.6%, for BMW it's 49%, and for Mercedes it's about 40%.

When you consider that "upfront cost parity" between EV and internal combustion vehicles is supposed to arrive sometime in 2024, there is an argument to be made that people are destined to start buying a lot more EVs in the near future.

They're already buying expensive cars and EVs will soon be cost neutral in that regard. At the same time, a lot of people lease their cars and will be in a position to easily switch when it makes sense to do that.

I think the greater barrier to adoption at this point will be the charging network and "range anxiety." Too many plug types and not enough charging stations, except maybe if you have a Tesla. But at some point that too will change, I'm sure.

This is a chart from a recent blog post by Ryerson University's Centre for Urban Research and Land Development. It shows net intraprovincial migration across the regions of the Greater Toronto Area. And what you are seeing here is people moving from expensive and built-up areas like the City of Toronto and the Region of Peel to lower cost areas further outside of the city.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. One, it's very much a natural market outcome. Many people tend to "vote with their feet" and look for greater housing affordability. And two, this is a trend that existed prior to COVID-19. It is not the death of cities. In the words of Ryerson's CUR, it's about people looking for more affordable lower-density housing.

But to what extent is "lower density" the key deciding factor? In other words, how much of this is consumer preference and how much of this is people being forced out by a lack of infill housing supply?

According to this recent WSJ article , 60% of Marriott's hotel stays in 2019 were for business travel. Given that this travel segment is believed to be one of the most permanently impacted by soul-sucking virtual meetings, the company has announced that it will be working to turn its hotels, or at least some of them, into "bleisure" destinations.

The idea here, as I understand it, is that if this pandemic does in fact result in greater work flexibility, but less business travel, then this could be a way to target people who are "working from anywhere." Don't travel for work; work while you travel, is I guess how you could spin this.

I'm not clear yet on how exactly this gets executed, but it sounds somewhat similar to the coliving/coworking spaces that currently cater to digital nomads and other location-agnostic professionals. Examples include companies like Outpost and Outsite .

Regardless of whether or not this is actually practical, productive, and scalable (it could be), I think the idea of working from different (and potentially exotic) locations all around the world is a compelling concept for many people. Especially right now after a year of mostly working from the kitchen table.