The Silent Breakthrough
T&V Letter Q1 2026
Electric cars and artificial intelligence show the same pattern: new technologies spread slowly at first, then suddenly. What seems like an exception or a futuristic topic for a long time becomes a global structural shift within a few years. For investors, what matters is not just what makes headlines today, but what is already making history in the background.
Insight
Electric cars: From a European exception to a global mass phenomenon
According to the energy think tank Ember, electric cars (pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids) accounted for less than 3% of new passenger car registrations worldwide in 2019. By the end of 2025, this share had risen to around 25%. Every fourth newly registered passenger car was electric.
What has changed is not just the number, but the pattern. According to Ember, in 2019 there were exactly four countries in the world where electric cars accounted for more than 10% of new passenger car registrations. All four were in Europe, all of them small markets with targeted support policies. In 2025, there are already 39 countries, twelve of them outside Europe, including China (53%), Singapore and Vietnam (around 40% each), Uruguay (27%), Thailand (20%), Costa Rica (17%), Indonesia (15%), and the USA (10%). Particularly striking: many of the fast-growing markets are not rich industrialized nations, but emerging markets that have simply skipped the internal combustion engine.
Norway shows where the journey can lead. According to Visual Capitalist, based on data from the IEA and Ember, the EV share of new Norwegian registrations in 2019 was already at 56%, unique in the world at the time and dismissed by many experts as a special case. According to the Norwegian Road Federation OFV, it was around 96% in 2025. In less than a generation, an entire country has transformed from an exception to a blueprint.
New technologies rarely spread linearly. They arrive creeping in, are underestimated, and then suddenly break through. Not always where you expect them to, but where the advantage is greatest and the resistance is lowest.
NEWSLETTER
Dear Reader
The first quarter of 2026 was a turbulent one. What began with trade tensions and tariff announcements escalated in March with a conflict that very few had on their radar: the situation surrounding Iran intensified at a pace that caught the markets off guard. The price of oil spiked to levels last seen during the 2022 energy crisis. Stock markets reacted as they always do in such moments: first with panic, then with reflection.
Stock markets worldwide came under pressure, from the S&P 500 to European and Asian markets. For investors in Swiss francs or euros, a complicating factor from the previous quarter continued to play out: the US dollar depreciated further, which amplified international price losses in local currency.
For a global economy already struggling with subdued growth, expensive oil is poison. It drives up production costs, burdens consumers, and squeezes margins for companies across all sectors. Geopolitical shocks of this kind are unpleasant, but historically they are rarely permanent.
What concerns us more than oil prices and stock market rates
Beyond the headlines
In February of this year, Matt Shumer, founder of an AI company in Silicon Valley, published an article that garnered a lot of attention in professional circles. In it, he recalls February 2020: Most people were living normally, children were going to school, and trips were being planned. Anyone who spoke back then of a virus that would change everything was hardly taken seriously. Three weeks later, the world was a different place. Shumer says: He believes we are currently in a similar phase, not before a pandemic, but before a technological shift that is already underway but not yet felt by most.
He describes his own daily work routine: He explains to the system what he wants, leaves his desk for four hours, and comes back to a finished result. Not a draft. The finished result.
What many do not know: AI does not improve linearly. For years there were solid but absorbable advancements. Then the pace accelerated, and then it accelerated again. On February 5, 2026, OpenAI and Anthropic simultaneously released new models. Many who are close to it describe this moment as a tipping point. Not like a light switch, but like the moment you realize that the water has already risen to your chest.
For context: In 2022, AI was still making mistakes on simple math problems. In 2023, it passed the bar exam. In 2024, it wrote functioning software. By the end of 2025, leading engineers declared that they had handed over the majority of their programming work to AI systems. This is not a future scenario. This is a look back at four years.
A research organization called METR regularly measures how long AI systems can operate autonomously. A year ago it was ten minutes, today it is already several hours. The value doubles every seven months. If you extend the trend,
What that means
It is not just the technology sector that is affected. Lawyers who review contracts and conduct research, analysts who build models and write reports, doctors who evaluate findings, journalists, programmers, marketing professionals — wherever reading, writing, and decision-making take place, AI can already keep pace. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, one of the world's leading AI companies, publicly stated that AI will replace around 50% of entry-level office positions in the next one to five years.
What distinguishes this shift from previous waves of automation: It does not affect just one industry or one activity. It affects cognitive work as a whole, and it is improving in all areas simultaneously.
Historically, however, technological change has moved humanity forward every single time. The loom did not destroy the textile industry; it transformed it. The internet did not create fewer jobs, but different ones.
What is different this time is the speed and the breadth. Previous waves of automation primarily affected physical labor. This one affects cognitive
Our conclusion
Geopolitics makes noise. Technological change makes history. Shumer aptly describes that those who have learned to go with the change will emerge stronger from it. His advice: anyone who uses the latest models for 20 dollars a month and gets into the habit of trying out something truly new for an hour every day will, after six months, understand what is coming better than most people in their environment. The free versions are often over a year behind. The hurdle is low. Almost no one does it.
As always, we thank you for the trust placed in us!
*This communication is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a personal recommendation or an independent financial analysis.
*By entering your email address, you agree to receive updates and communications from us. You can unsubscribe at any time.
