T&V Letter | Q1 2026

Insight

According to energy think tank Ember, electric vehicles (battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids) accounted for less than 3% of new passenger car registrations worldwide in 2019. By end of 2025, that share had risen to around 25%. One in every four newly registered passenger cars was electric.

What has changed is not just the number, but the pattern. According to Ember, in 2019 there were exactly four countries where EVs accounted for more than 10% of new passenger car registrations. All four were in Europe, all small markets with targeted incentive policies. By 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%). Notably, many of the fastest-growing markets are not wealthy industrialised nations but emerging economies that have simply skipped the combustion engine.

Norway shows where this journey can lead. According to Visual Capitalist, based on IEA and Ember data, the EV share of new passenger car registrations in Norway was already 56% in 2019, then unique worldwide and dismissed by many experts as an anomaly. According to the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV), it reached around 96% in 2025. In less than a generation, an entire country has transformed from outlier to blueprint.

New technologies rarely spread in a linear fashion. They arrive gradually, are underestimated, and then break through suddenly. Not always where expected, but where the advantage is greatest and resistance is lowest.

Dear reader

The first quarter of 2026 was eventful. What began with trade tensions and tariff announcements escalated in March into a conflict few had on their radar: the situation around Iran deteriorated at a pace that caught markets off guard. Oil prices shot to levels last seen during the 2022 energy crisis. Markets reacted as they always do in such moments: first with panic, then with reflection.

Equity markets came under pressure globally, the S&P 500 as well as European and Asian markets. For investors in Swiss francs or euros, an additional burden familiar from the previous quarter: the US dollar continued to weaken, amplifying international losses when measured in local currency.

For a global economy already struggling with subdued growth, expensive oil is poison. It raises production costs, burdens consumers and squeezes margins across all sectors. Geopolitical shocks of this kind are unpleasant, but historically rarely permanent.

What concerns us more than oil prices and stock markets is a shift unfolding more quietly, but more profound than anything of the past few decades.

10 biggest companies by size for each decade — A man sits alone at night in front of a glowing screen. The machine works — he waits.

Beyond the Headlines

In February of this year, Matt Shumer, founder of an AI company in Silicon Valley, published an article that attracted considerable attention in the industry. In it, he recalls February 2020: most people were living normally, children were going to school, trips were being planned. Anyone who spoke of a virus that would change everything was barely taken seriously. Three weeks later, the world was different. Shumer says: he believes we are currently in a similar phase, not before a pandemic, but before a technological shift that is already underway, yet not yet felt by most.

He describes his own daily work: he tells 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 realise: AI does not improve linearly. For years there was solid, but manageable progress. Then the pace accelerated, and then again. On 5 February 2026, OpenAI and Anthropic simultaneously released new models. Many close to the field describe this moment as a tipping point. Not like a light switch, but like the moment you realise the water has already risen to your chest.

For context: in 2022, AI still made errors on simple arithmetic. In 2023, it passed the bar exam. In 2024, it wrote working software. By late 2025, leading engineers reported having handed over most of their coding work to AI systems. This is not a future scenario. This is a look back over four years.

A research organisation called METR regularly measures how long AI systems can work independently. A year ago, that was ten minutes; today it is already several hours. The figure doubles every seven months. If the trend continues, within two to three years we are talking about systems that can independently handle week-long projects.

What This Means

It is not only the technology sector that is affected. Lawyers reviewing contracts and conducting research, analysts building models and writing reports, doctors evaluating findings, journalists, programmers, marketing professionals: wherever reading, writing and decision-making takes place, AI can already keep up. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies, has publicly stated that AI will replace around 50% of entry-level white-collar positions within the next one to five years.

What distinguishes this shift from previous waves of automation: it does not target one industry or one activity. It targets cognitive work as a whole, and improves across all areas simultaneously. Historically, technological change has always moved humanity forward. The loom did not destroy the textile industry, it transformed it. The internet did not create fewer jobs, it created different ones.

What is different this time: the speed and the breadth. Previous waves of automation primarily affected physical work. This one affects cognitive work. Not all professions simultaneously and not overnight. But the direction is clear.

Our Conclusion

Geopolitics makes noise. Technological change makes history. Shumer aptly describes how those who will emerge stronger from this shift are the ones who have learned to move with it. His advice: those who spend 20 dollars a month on the latest models and make a habit of genuinely trying something new every day will, after six months, understand what is coming better than most people around them. The free versions are often more than a year behind. The bar is low. Almost nobody is doing it.

As always, we thank you for the trust you have placed in us!

*This communication is for information purposes only and constitutes neither a personal recommendation nor an independent financial analysis.

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