The shift to electric mobility is not a future event. It is the operating environment. The question for leaders in automotive, energy, infrastructure, and adjacent sectors is not whether to engage with it but how to compete in it — and how to read where it is going next.
Mark Preston has spent the last decade at the front of that transition. As Team Principal of the DS Techeetah Formula E squad — the series that pioneered electric single-seater racing and proved it could attract global manufacturers, city-centre audiences, and serious technical competition — he operated in the laboratory where the electric future was being worked out in real time. Since leaving the cockpit of that team, he has been at Lola Cars and in the autonomous vehicle sector, watching the next layer of the transition take shape.
What this talk covers
This keynote uses Formula E as a precise case study in what happens when an industry disrupts itself by choice — and what the resulting competitive dynamics reveal about the broader electric transition. Formula E wasn’t created because combustion motorsport was dying. It was created to accelerate EV development, prove the technology to consumers, and give manufacturers a genuine competitive platform for next-generation powertrains. The choices made in that context — about technology architecture, manufacturer partnerships, infrastructure, audience, and business model — mirror exactly the choices being made right now by automotive OEMs, energy companies, and city authorities around the world.
The talk examines where the electric transition is creating genuine competitive advantage versus where it is simply accelerating the redistribution of existing market share. It addresses the battery technology and infrastructure dependencies that will define competitive positioning through the 2030s, the role of software and data in electric vehicles as a second disruption layered on top of the first, and the specific ways that Chinese OEMs — whose competitive posture Mark has studied closely through Lola’s commercial work — are approaching the transition differently from Western manufacturers.
A section on autonomous vehicles draws on Mark’s work at StreetDrone and in the broader AV sector, examining where the autonomy roadmap intersects with the electric transition and what the combined disruption means for mobility infrastructure, urban planning, and the insurance and liability markets that sit underneath it all.
Who this is for
This talk is designed for senior audiences in automotive and mobility, energy and infrastructure, financial services and investment, and technology sectors where electric vehicles and autonomous systems represent a strategic variable — either as a threat, an opportunity, or both. It is particularly relevant to boards and leadership teams that need to stress-test their assumptions about the pace and direction of the electric transition using evidence from the industry that has been living it longest.
What audiences take away
A grounded view of the electric and autonomous transition that goes beyond the standard analyst forecasts — because it is built from operational experience in the series that set the pace. A framework for assessing competitive positioning in an industry mid-disruption: which advantages are durable, which are temporary, and which are already being competed away. And a set of second-order questions about where the transition creates new markets rather than simply reshaping existing ones — the questions that tend to separate organisations that emerge from disruption larger than they entered from those that simply survive it.
Book this talk: Contact Mark via the enquiry form or through Champions Speakers Bureau. Available internationally. Particularly well suited to automotive industry events, energy sector conferences, investor forums, and mobility summits.