IAA Munich 2025, Photobombing Satellites, Longrange EV

Stories in todays newsletter:

🚗 IAA Mobility Munich 2025 — The Good, The Bad, The Ugly…

📍The End of Range Anxiety?

🛰️Starlink: Blessing for the Internet, Curse for the Stars?

🎧Podcast: AI isn’t the new electricity

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Global News Rundown for Sept 10–17, 2025 - a mix of serious developments, bright spots, and fun stuff to lift the mood.

Fitch has upgraded global growth for 2025 from 2.2% to 2.4%. Translation: the world’s economy is like that one friend who insists they’re “doing fine” after a breakup, still shaky, but pulling through. India’s the star pupil here, sprinting toward nearly 7% growth while the U.S. looks like it needs a nap.

World Ozone Day (Sept 16) reminded us that global cooperation can actually work. Thanks to the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer is on track to heal, proof that humanity occasionally gets its act together.

Russian drones buzzed into Polish airspace, which Warsaw quickly labeled “aggressive and reckless.” Europe collectively rolled its eyes and muttered: “Seriously? Again?” NATO is watching, Poland is fuming, and Russia … well, Russia drones on.

From rural West Virginia clinics to European research labs, AI is being used for early heart failure detection and flu-strain predictions. Imagine your future doctor as a friendly AI that doesn’t forget your birthday and definitely remembers your cholesterol numbers.

Trump’s emergency takeover of D.C.’s police force is about to expire, sparking yet another round of political bickering. Add immigration flare-ups and park-content policing (yes, apparently that’s a thing now) and it’s safe to say U.S. politics is still running like a soap opera no one asked for but everyone keeps watching.

👉 Overall: The world is messy, but ozone holes are healing, science is getting cooler, and at least sports still gives us something to cheer about (or curse at).

Our Money, Our Risk, Real Investment, No Advice

Hey folks, I just got back from IAA Mobility in Munich and let me tell you, it was a feast for gearheads and futurists. But not without its share of eyebrow raises. Here’s my take, all in full color: the wins, the whiffs, and the bizarre.

Munich once again turned into the world’s biggest mobility circus, and IAA 2025 didn’t disappoint. With more than 750 exhibitors from 37 countries, over 350 world premieres, and half a million visitors, it’s safe to say this was less a car show and more a mobility festival. Downtown Munich literally turned into a test track, art gallery, and political rally all at once.

The good? Finally, some global spice. Over half the exhibitors came from outside Germany, and the Chinese rolled in like the popular new kids who don’t care about your old high-school rules. BYD, SAIC, GAC, Leapmotor, once mocked as copycats, are now building factories in Europe and offering EVs priced like cars you can actually afford, not like museum exhibits. The Germans smiled, but you could see the nervous sweat.

Of course, Europe wasn’t about to just roll over. BMW gave us the Neue Klasse iX3 (aka: “the real one is coming soon, trust us”), Cupra decided to reinvent itself as a lifestyle brand, complete with shoes, fizzy drinks, and fragrances (because nothing says mobility revolution like eau de Cupra), and Audi pulled the nostalgia lever with a TT-inspired EV. Mercedes and Polestar, meanwhile, flexed their ranges and performance numbers like they were in an Instagram gym reel.

The bad? Affordability is still missing in action. Most EVs shown here looked like they belong in a design museum, not your driveway. And Stellantis? They basically stood on stage, sighed loudly, and said: “Forget carbon neutrality by 2035, folks. It’s impossible.” Brutal honesty or just a pre-emptive excuse to keep selling hybrids until the sun explodes? You decide.

The ugly? Oh, plenty. Vanishing screens, luxury lounges on wheels, and cars that release curated scents. Yes, manufacturers are apparently battling over who can make your cabin smell like the best yoga retreat. Practical issues like charging networks, energy prices, and raw materials? Swept under the very plush carpet.

Here’s the real takeaway: the auto game is no longer about horsepower, it’s about experience, affordability, and survival under regulatory chaos. Europe’s brands can’t just keep waving the heritage flag, the Chinese are here, they’re cheaper, and they’re fast. Consumers will notice, and soon “Made in Germany” might just have to share the spotlight with “Made in Shenzhen.”

So, yes, Munich gave us neon lights, glossy concepts, and more press releases than a government scandal. But let’s not kid ourselves: the mobility future isn’t about who has the fanciest disappearing dashboard. It’s about who can actually deliver cars that people want, can afford, and can charge without needing a PhD in patience.

Reinhold Messner’s birthday — Italian mountaineer, explorer.

Reinhold Messner was the first person in history to climb Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen (together with Peter Habeler in 1978) — something most experts at the time thought was physiologically impossible. Doctors predicted the human body couldn’t survive the extreme altitude without bottled oxygen. Messner and Habeler proved them wrong, relying only on their training, acclimatization, and sheer determination.

💡 Beyond Everest, Messner was also the first to climb all 14 “eight-thousanders” (peaks over 8,000 meters) — again, without oxygen. He calls his approach “by fair means,” emphasizing respect for nature, minimal equipment, and self-reliance.

Mercedes-Benz just pulled a “mind-bubble pop” moment: they used a new solid-state battery in an EQS test vehicle to drive 749 miles (that’s almost Stuttgart → Malmö) on a single charge. And here’s the kicker, after arriving, the car still had 85 extra miles of range left. All this while using a battery that’s roughly the same size/weight as current models, but with ~25% more usable energy, helped by clever passive airflow cooling

This feels less like auto industry hype, and more like a legitimate leap, the kind of thing engineers write home about. Solid-state batteries have been promised like the next holy grail of EV tech (longer range, safety, less fire risk), but the trade-offs (cost, durability, complex manufacturing) have held them back. If Mercedes’ test can be reproduced in production-friendly scale, it might actually begin to erase range anxiety, you know, the persistent ghost in every prospective EV buyer’s mind.

But yes, I’m cautious. Tests are one thing, mass production is another. If your car costs too much or breaks down somewhere without service, impressive mile numbers won’t matter much to your average driver.

Alright, let’s talk Starlink. On the ground, it looks like magic, millions of people in remote corners of the world finally getting high-speed internet. Students in rural villages stream lectures, small businesses connect to global markets, and Netflix buffers less in the middle of nowhere. That’s progress.

But tilt your head upward, and the story changes. Astronomers are fuming. Why? Because Starlink’s growing constellation is cluttering the sky. We’re talking streaks of satellites “photobombing” telescope images, like that recent shot where Starlink flares cut across an orbital view of a secret Chinese air base. Cosmic irony: the sky meant to reveal secrets of the universe now reveals… broadband satellites.

And it’s not just visible light. A study analyzing 76 million radio telescope images found Starlink interference in places where no signals are supposed to exist. Imagine trying to hear a whisper across a quiet room… while someone fires up a leaf blower. That’s astronomy right now.

To be fair, SpaceX isn’t blind to this. They’ve partnered with astronomers, testing darker coatings, better satellite orientations, and even collaborations to protect sensitive radio astronomy. It’s a start.

Starlink is proof that tech fixes one problem while creating another. Yes, it connects humanity, but at the cost of obscuring our window to the cosmos. The big question: will future generations remember Starlink as the company that gave the world internet access or the one that dimmed the stars?

Benedict Evans is one of those rare analysts who doesn’t just connect dots, he redraws the whole map. If you’ve ever read his essays or listened to him speak, you know his trick: he makes the obvious suddenly profound. In this week’s podcast, he wrestles with the endlessly shifting landscape of tech, how cycles repeat, how hype burns hot and then cools, and how the big themes of AI, mobile, and media are less about the gadget in your hand and more about the tectonic plates underneath.

Evans doesn’t sell predictions, he sells perspective. And that’s far more useful. Listening to him, you get the sense that the real skill in technology isn’t betting on the next shiny thing but understanding why certain things matter when they do. His take is sharp, sometimes contrarian, but always wrapped in that dry, British clarity that makes you think, “Of course, why didn’t I see it that way before?”

If you want a break from the noise and a lens that makes the chaos of tech feel, if not predictable, at least explainable, this episode is worth your time.

Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not … fruit taxonomy is bananas. 🍌🍓

The Mimimum Viable Product Team: Amod, Damian, Vlad and Ferdinand read your emails and comments daily.

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